August 26, 2001   

Milo has his first chore!  He feeds the cat every day!  It's so sweet.  We went to visit Gramma and Grampa Duhn last weekend, and they had him feed their dog each day, and I just couldn't get over how proud he was to feed the dog.  He felt so important, and he just beamed.  I realized that there's no reason why we couldn't do the same thing at home with the kitty, so we've implemented it this week, and it's just great.  The kitty appreciates it so much, she brought him a nice, dead mole (which, cat lovers will know, is the highest form of love).  She laid it right in his dirt pile, so I know it was for him.  Of course, she still won't let Milo pet her, but this is major progress!

I had him help me scrub his table today with SOS pads as well.  I've been letting him color with just about anything he feels like coloring with, and a lot of the markers he's been choosing aren't the washable kind, and he's only 'okay' about staying on the paper (he has a nice plastic picnic table, it's not like he's scribbling all over anything fancy...although he did make quite a mural on the wall with a brown colored pencil last week), so there were lots of marks that soapy water wouldn't take off.  So I brought out the SOS pads.  He seemed to really enjoy scrubbing, but that child got foam and water all over the place!  I just had to remind myself that even if it did create more work for me, in the long run, I'll be well served by a child who can clean up after himself....  Hey, I can dream, can't I?

Milo had to see the doctor on Friday because he has an ear infection.  When I picked him up at school on Friday, his teacher said that he had been walking around the playground with his head tipped onto his shoulder for quite a while.  At first, she said, she thought he was just 'looking at the world from another perspective,' but after he had done it for a few minutes, she began to wonder if his ear was bothering him.  So I called the doctor (after last year's hearing loss, I'm definitely not screwing around with more ear infections!) and they confirmed an ear infection.  Grr.  One of his tubes has fallen out completely and the other one is in the ear canal and no longer in the ear drum - so it's not serving any purpose, it just hasn't fallen out yet.  I sure hope he doesn't have to get tubes again.  The fact that he's already got an infection makes me very nervous, but the doctor just put him on antibiotics and wants to see him again in 3 weeks.  I need to remember to just take things as they come and take them in stride!  The neat news is that we learned Milo weighs 30 pounds!  Pretty  cool!