Ronin-isms

Um, ok, not running lately. :(

Anyway, I have a few 'isms about Ronin:

Ronin: You look for monsters, I look for all the spiders. OK?

Daddy: Ronin, you're impossible!
Ronin: I'm not impossible. I'm handsome!


Ronin is talking up a storm. The biggest problem is that he has returned to being SUPER WHINY. I cannot stand it. I'm trying to teach him to use his words, of course, but his whining is grating on my nerves so much that I have to use earplugs in the morning, to keep the din low and to keep from reaching that yelling stage. He does say some interesting things, however. At Jenna, Nikko's ABA therapist, Ronin said, "I went to Mom's house and saw Jesus! Jesus is The King and he has a crown!" I cracked up so hard when he declared that! I had to stop and tell Jenna that Ronin calls my parents Mom and Dad (I am Mommy, Denis is Daddy), and since they are strict Catholics they have a bigger than life-sized image of the baby Jesus as a child, called the Santo Nino. It's dressed ornately, and it wears a crown. SO, that's why he says Jesus is The King. Get it? ;)

Running now

I've started running this week. Monday, to be exact. After the kids went down around 8:30, I'd straighten some things up and then be on the treadmill by 9:00. I'd briskly walk for 4 minutes and then crank up the running solid for 26 minutes. I ran four days this week, but won't be able to tomorrow since we're going to the in-laws for dinner and will most likely come home late. Maybe Saturday will be a break as well, but then I'll start up again by Sunday. On day two, I got a stitch in my right side, under the ribcage, probably the diaphragm. I didn't stop running, just gritted my teeth through the pain. Atz told me I should have stopped and stretched it out to avoid further injury, but of course I didn't do that at the time. I didn't want to stop running and ruin the rhythm. Unfortunately the pain has continued all week, so maybe I bruised something or pulled a little something. Oh well, can't stop unless it's something puncturing my lung, right? I've lost no weight this week, and didn't expect to.

It started with the doorknob.

So what could have possibly happened to derail me from my very motivated attitude in the last post? I'll tell you what happened.

The doorknob. The kids' wakings. The dead man's walk. Room changes. Lack of sleep.

The doorknob.
For 6 months or so, Ronin and Nikko shared the nursery and slept fine in each others' company. Then in October, when it got colder in the house, the wood in the floors and in the doorways seemed to shrink. It caused the doorknob hitch to slip easily out of the niche in the doorway. Thus, the door would easily unlatch and creak open, either by the push of a fingertip or by stepping on the wrong floorboard. Once Nikko discovered that he could get out of the room if he woke up in the middle of the night, he'd come running down the hall and into our bed. I started using bungee cords to tie the doorknob to a chair to keep it shut, but Nikko would force his way out.

The kids' wakings.
Suddenly, Nikko started waking up in the middle of the night. Sometimes he would wake up Ronin and they'd both be at the bungee-tied door. Once I came in and Nikko was standing by Ronin's bed, crying and whining for my attention. A thought came into my head that Nikko might hurt Ronin in the middle of the night, if I didn't come to the door. I did manage to take apart the door niche in the doorway, pad it with some clay and elevate the plate so that the doorknob latch would stick. The door was fixed. Hooray!

The dead man's walk.
But this didn't stop Nikko from waking up in the middle of the night and crying/whining. I started coming into the room when Nikko woke up and to keep him quiet, I would grab some blankets and a pillow and sleep on the floor between the two beds. If Nikko knew I was there, he wouldn't try to get out and he wouldn't go anywhere. The problem was that this was happening a lot. My back was starting to suffer again. This wasn't the way it was supposed to be.

Room changes.
I decided, after much thought and research from friends on other web boards as well as the ABA therapists, that Nikko would have to be in a room alone so that if he needed to cry it out, he could do it alone without disturbing Audrey or Ronin too much. A part of me didn't want to do this because I wished that Nikko and Ronin could share a room the way normal brothers would. I didn't want to ostracize Nikko and let him be alone. But I had no more solutions and had to try something different. I took apart the crib and reassembled it in the nursery, while we all moved Nikko's bed to the 2nd room and Ronin's bed stayed in the nursery. A new arrangement. Did it help? A little. But Ronin was having middle-of-the-night wakings, too. I was now going between rooms, alternating nights. No more sleeping on the floor, but sometimes in their beds. Still am. What else could I do to curb the behaviors?

Lack of sleep.
My last straw, which is currently being tested, was to put everyone to bed at an earlier bedtime. I heard that sleep begets sleep, and that maybe the kids' 8-9 hours would gradually lengthen. Possibly. What did I have to lose? So instead of Audrey down at 8:30ish and the boys by 9:15/20ish, I pushed it back so Audrey is down at 7:40p and the boys at 8:30p. Is it working? I'm only 4 days into it. Sometimes Nikko sleeps straight until 6:30 or 7. That's actually ok. But Ronin is going through a phase where he's waking up every other day at 4-ish, just to be tucked back into bed. Nikko has also woken up at 3a this week, and I stayed in his bed because I was too tired to walk back to mine and to cry him out. No heart for it.

And there you have it. My reasons why I haven't gotten on the treadmill since December. I had no energy to exercise after getting up in the middle of the night for the boys. For the last five months, I have been consumed with the problem of getting these kids to sleep! It's been so frustrating and still is. But with this earlier bedtime schedule, I'm now free after 8:30p. There's time to go run! I have been going to bed by 1, 1:30 latest, but I know that I could get to bed by 12 or 12:30 if I made better use of my time. It's Friday right now, so I am going to start the treadmill on Monday, at the least. I think it's time to try it again.

Run!

I helped Denis get the treadmill moved back into the house today. It's in the basement and I have to clean it up. It still works! The caveat is that it's currently in the middle of the basement under the lowest part of the ceiling. If I run on it and bounce, my head will hit the ceiling! He didn't want to move it again, so since I'm just starting out on it again, I'll walk. Then I won't bump my noggin. I'll try to relocate it myself if we don't get to it by next weekend, but it's heavy. I can roll it on wheels, however. My point of mentioning this is that I am going to be FULLY COMMITTED to using that treadmill and do some major cardio for at least a solid month or two. Maybe three. I am SICK of the fat on my body and know that a good cardio workout will hopefully help slim down some corners. I'll worry about weight training later. I am also finishing my last row of Ghihardelli brownies, and determined to keep off the totally junky stuff so I can lose some weight. My plan is to walk briskly for a week, to get the kinks out of my joints and get used to using my heart at a fast pace since I haven't formally exercised in three years. THREE YEARS. YIKES!!! But now's the time, the treadmill's back, and I desperately want to shed 20-25 pounds. It won't be overnight. But it will be AT NIGHT. After the kids are in bed, I will walk, then run for 30-60 minutes, then go shower and then clean up the kitchen. Or a combo of that. I will severely reduce my Facebook presence at night so I can accomplish this goal. And I'm not going to mention this to anyone unless they ask. I'm not trying to be held accountable for it, I just want to try to do this on my own. But Chinny knows, and Denis knows of course. I think it may inspire him to want to work out with me, too, although he already works out but sporadically. I think it's giving him an excuse to buy some weights for the basement. So that I can use them, too. Sure, I will, but for right now it will be about a cardio BLAST. Another incentive is that I truly believe that if I can lighten up my body, it may relieve the pressure on my spine and lower back. I am in pain every single day, for over a year. The chiropractor couldn't save me. The cortisone shot couldn't save me. I knew, deep down, that being physically fit might help. And if it doesn't, then surgery might be the road I'd have to take. So to avoid getting cut open in the back, let me try to lose the weight. I'm very excited about this plan, and have been anxious for the past two weeks for that treadmill to get back into the house from the garage. Starting tomorrow night, I'll clean it up and start a slow walk. I'll shoot for 4 times a week, but won't hold back if 5, 6 and 7 feels good. Hope I don't overdo it and hurt myself in the beginning. Gonna load up the mp3 player and get my groove on!!!

Pondering Flu Shots

Ronin's OT eval was fine. He's doing great as a kid. Some low muscle tone, needs some upper body work, but we knew that since he became sickly with his asthma, plus his food allergies. Classic case. We're still doing speech therapy because Pete says he needs to work on his cognitive and expressive language. OK, fine. I suppose I could call the coordinator and just tell her we're through with speech, but Denis was in favor of continuing it. FIIIIINE, I'll keep going. It doesn't hurt, but I don't want Pete to put any more useless thoughts into my head.

I'm worried every time I hear Ronin cough, and tonight Audrey's been hacking away. I felt her forehead and she's not warm at all, but it could be something viral. I'll have to see how she is in the morning. Ronin had a flu shot at the new allergist's office. They watched his reaction to it, because the flu shot normally has egg in it. He did fine. On Saturday both Nikko and Audrey will get the flu shot at the pediatrician's office. We are going to have to wait until they get the H1N1 vaccine. My friend Alexa stood in line for 7.5 hours to get herself and her daughter vaccinated. I don't know where. But that is a LONG time. There are so many pros and cons to getting the vax, it would make your head spin. There are overall cons for the kids because they are all at risk, Nikko has developmental delays/neurological delays, Ronin has asthma, and Audrey is just one year old. Nikko's autism could also be aggravated by any mercury or thimerasol or anything funky in the vax. Actually, ALL the kids could be affected by something in the vax down the road. I'm slightly nervous about Audrey's future shots because there's a possibility that any vax, flu shot, H1N1 shot or regular ped shot could make her regress. Nikko was pretty much born with his neurological delays in my book, despite his achieving most of his milestones like sitting up and walking, but he was never pointing or waving or clapping his hands when he was a baby. He waved for a very short period of time, but lost the skill. Therefore, I don't believe that vaccines caused his autism. But could they cause it in the other kids? I think Ronin is in the clear, he's over 2 years old, but after shots and sicknesses you never know if he could regress. I've read that it happened to someone on one of the autism boards, the boy Zavier was 28 months when he regressed after getting sick or shots. That is so scary. Especially since Ronin is talking and is so sharp. Guess I should be nicer to him than I was today. LOL! And Audrey seems to be developing quite normally, she can clap, pick up small objects with a pincer grasp, points in a rudimentary way, tries to say words like Cheese (Chssss), Ball (Bah), Pacy (Pah), Ma, Da, Duck (Dah), Pig (Pa)... that's pretty good for a 1 year old, I think! Ronin didn't even crack any real words, or close to them, until almost 20 months. We're still waiting for more from Nikko.

Walking Audrey

On Thursday, Oct. 8, I was waiting for Peter to arrive for Ronin's speech therapy session when I noticed that Audrey was pulling herself up to stand and taking 3-4 steps at a time before falling back on her butt. I saw her pull up onto her feet, then let go and stand alone for a minute at a time. In the back of my mind I said to myself, "OK, she's walking longer today. That's great!" The next day at the in-law's house she was taking 4-5 steps and standing even longer. Each day after that she has been toddling around more and more, and so this week she has truly learned how to walk. It's amazing. She's still doing some crawling, but the majority of the time she's on her feet, walking like Frankenstein. All this before her 1st birthday. YEA!

Ronin is obsessed with the Disney Cars characters. He also watches Finding Nemo, but he is fixated on playing with the matchbox-sized cars and is lamenting that he couldn't take home Doc Hudson from my friend's kid Boon's house. This evening, Pat and Anna found two Doc Hudsons at Babies R Us and dropped them off for me (I owe them moolah and thanks for that!). I'll bring one to church tomorrow and whip it out when Ronin has a meltdown. I'll save the other for when we lose the one he'll open. Ronin's speech is coming along, but not enough that I was able to get us out of another 6 months of speech therapy. Ronin was a late talker, and he's good at repeating what we say, but his spontaneous speech isn't smooth. It's still early, he'll catch up I'm sure. But Peter is making me paranoid about Ronin's behavioral problems i.e. his fixation on Cars, his inability to transition between activities (stuck on cars), and his "perseveration" on cars, according to Pete. He recommended an OT evaluation. I hope Ronin passes it well, if/when it happens, because although he is a difficult-acting child at times, I don't think he has delay or sensory issues. Peter thinks he has sensory issues. Who knows? Doesn't hurt to get the evaluation.

Bed rearranging, and just busy!

Just a quick note. I think I'm going to have to do more during the day in terms of organizing and cleaning instead of trying to fit it in after the kids go to bed. Yeah, we have a dishwasher now, but after loading it and cleaning up the physical kitchen, I go over papers and blog about Nikko, look at websites and end up staying up too late to start any new project. I've got tons of filing to do, papers to sort and put aways, as well as overall JUNK that needs purging and I can't seem to get to it because I'm doing other things after the kids are asleep. We've just been through a busy weekend, transferring kid furniture and now Audrey is sleeping in the 2nd room by herself and the boys share the nursery. Ronin has a new bed which he doesn't want to sleep in at night. Audrey has the crib, which she seems to LOVE. And Nikko is ambivalent about where his bed got moved, showing no signs that it bothers him in the least that he's not alone anymore. Audrey's not Ferberized yet, still sleeps with a paci. In fact, I've replaced it twice tonight, and am thinking that after tonight I should just not go in and let her cry herself back to sleep. Unfortunately it will be at the expense of the boys if they wake up, but I'm hoping she will complly. I HOPE. Anyway, I've got to hit the hay. I have an earlier schedule now that Nikko's in preschool. I set my alarm for 6:45a so I can get the breakfast stuff ready and rolling for Nikko, then go fetch Nikko hopefully around 7:10ish. I'm still working out the morning schedule kinks.