Welcome to October.

Milly and I had other-than-usual Mondays today, and it started as soon as she woke up around 8:15 or so.  I heard her get up and opened the door before she had a chance to knock, and the first thing out of her mouth was, “Daddy, I pooped and pee peed in the little potty!”  And indeed she had.  In fact, she hadn’t put her pullup back on, so I checked her bed and it was dry.

If you may recall, Amanda and I are bribing Milly, telling her that if she can go a week without making a mess in her pullups while she’s sleeping we’ll get a baby Ariel doll for her from Target.  We put her training potty in her room right next to her bed along with a box of Kleenex (figuring she’d make a mess with a toilet paper roll).  She did have a bit of a streak in her pullup, but I was really proud of her.  The most amazing part of it was that she’d pooped.  She HATES pooping and has always fussed and cried when she’d had to do it.  Yet here, last night or this morning, she did it of her own volition without a peep.

Amanda and I decided to change things up a little from the original deal and made it so that she just had to have ten dry days, sine we didn’t want her to get too frustrated if she got close to the goal and fell short, so when we went downstairs I made a chart for her to put stickers on.  She liked that idea so much that she wanted to keep putting stickers on and got upset when I wouldn’t let her, since she gets one for every dry day.  She got it eventually though.

Karen came and took Milly to the Arboretum where they met up with Karen’s friend Mary Shaw and her granddaughter, Kate, who is Milly’s age.  Milly and Kate met once before, but Amanda said Kate wasn’t too into playing with Milly at the time.  Karen told me they played great together this time.

Meanwhile, I had a lunch meeting at Hell’s Kitchen with Steve Bon.  Amanda’s been telling me I’d like Hell’s Kitchen, which is why I chose it.  I had a burger with bleu cheese on it, cooked medium.  Man, it just melted in my mouth.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a bleu cheese burger that wasn’t just awesome.

We talked about a number of things, business and otherwise, and had a good meeting I think.  However, when I walked outside I saw a ticket on the Escape, and I saw the meter guy a spot or two past it.  As I was walking across the street I said to him, “Guess I was a couple minutes too late.”  “Yeah, sorry,” he said.  I couldn’t be mad, it was my own fault.  Still, it sucks that had I left a minute or two earlier I would have saved myself $20.

Milly and Karen were already back when I came home.  Karen left and I put Milly down for a nap then got on with some more work stuff.

Because Milly doesn’t sleep much for naps anymore, she was up about an hour or so after I put her down.  She decided she wanted to draw at one point, so she started drawing on her chalkboard and drew a picture that impressed me.  She started off drawing a rainbow, which turned into rainbow hair.  She drew lines on top of that for a crown and little circles for eyes with a smile under them.  Later she’d draw a line across the top of the smile to make it an open mouth, but what most impressed me about that was that Milly kept wiping off the bottom of it and redrawing it in order to get it just the way she wanted it.

She also drew feet and a dress, though she kept redoing the dress too.  She drew something in the mouth and told me they were ugly germs then drew arms up the side of the face and told me it was her brushing her teeth.

Amanda and Milly walked up to the Griffins’ while I mowed the lawn.  Before they left Milly stuck her head out the front door and said something to me, so I stopped the mower.  She’d been asking me if I was fine, then she wanted to help me mow, so I told her to stand on the walkway and point out the places where the grass was high.  She got tired of that fast.

When she and Amanda left though, she shouted out to me again, “Daddy, are you fine?”  Such a caring girl.

I joined them after I finished mowing, swept the walkways and driveway and took a shower.  It was starting to drizzle by that point so I took an umbrella.  I didn’t stay long because Milly was in a mood.  Amanda said Milly had tripped and face planted when she went in the house and had been moody since then.  She wanted to hold the umbrella and almost poked Maddox in the eye and was generally being not being careful with it, so I took it from her, which prompted her to bawl.

After Milly went to bed Amanda and I did what we usually do, which was to watch some TV.  Tonight it was How I Met Your Mother and Revolution.

Zach Dotsey
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