Out like a Lamb??

James attended his first successful children's birthday party.  By successful, I mean: no tantrums, sitting nicely at the table, actually eating with the other kids, and running around with them.  It was at school, and, as we have been working on eating at school, it was a complete surprise when James started eating pizza and drinking Hi-C on his own initiative.  His teachers were amazed and took pictures!  They didn't know James could drink from a cup, without spilling, and with one hand!  Then he ate one and a half slices.  James even tolerated the guitar player for a good long while.  At home, James freaks out and holds his hands over the strings when Dad plays the guitar.  And won't calm until the guitar is back in the case or on the wall.  Eventually James wanted the player to stop (same behavior as at home).  Luckily, it was almost time to end anyway, so nothing escalated.  His ever-positive main teacher was happy to see James forceful about something, really communicating his point.  God bless her!  

Another good note is that James has been slowly trying to engage the other kids on the playground and yesterday (after a horrendous morning), he actually threw the ball at two of his classmates, several times, trying to get them to play catch!  He had to settle for one of the adults as those kids weren't interested, but, regardless MY KID RULES.  

Now the down side:  James has been screaming again at night. The reason his AM was so bad yesterday was that he had only three hours sleep.  Last night was better - he was only up for and hour and a half - but the screaming was worse.  We calmed him fairly quickly, thank God, by quietly reading books, covered up in bed.  After about 15 to 20 minutes, he agreed to try and go to sleep again.  He was up for almost and hour more, but laid quietly and happily in the dark with his Daddy.  We have no confirmation of what is causing this but after wracking my brain, I can only guess that it is constipation causing nightmares.  He did poop yesterday but after that intake of cheese pizza, perhaps it wasn't enough?  No matter, books work wonders: they calm and focus him at school during lunch AND they calm him in the middle of the night!  I guess you could say the this website fully endorses READING TO YOUR KID.  Let's hope tonight (and the rest of our life for that matter) goes even better.