Getting there

So, Frank has settled in fairly well to Pre-K. His first day of not crying when I dropped him off was Monday, his fourth day of pre-K. I fully expected to almost start at square one after having the weekend off, so this was quite a pleasant surprise. Maybe switching to a totally new school for kindergarten next year won't be as much of a trauma as I fear it will be?

He's been wearing underwear to school, too. Not that he's actually using the potty, yet, but, as his teacher, J, said, "His accidents are getting closer to the toilet each day!" Today he actually held it until it was an emergency, and peed on the floor in front of the toilet because he simply couldn't hold it any more. His pants were off and everything. He still insists that toilet is not private enough, and asked Darrel the other day if he could build a door to put on there.

He greeted me after school the other day with the words, "Mommy, my ear hurts." Okay, this is the kid whose head has hit the driveway, and slid down a flight of stairs on his butt and laughed both incidents off, so the fact that he was complaining of pain would have alarmed me, anyway, but we had just been to the ENT three weeks ago to check on his tubes, and they are "still lodged in there pretty firmly." So I was quite freaked.

When we got home, it was too late to call the doctor- the office was closed for the day. He didn't have a fever, but I gave him Tylenol, and a half hour later, he told me his ear didn't hurt anymore. The next morning, we dosed him with Tylenol again, and sent him to school. (This early in the school year, I cannot be calling in sick, and Darrel just started a new job two weeks ago, so that would look pretty bad to be calling in sick or asking to work from home one day this early on.) Because I interpret stright through in the mornings, I told Darrel to call the pediatrician and make an appointment for immediately after school. I took Frank in, and sure enough, he has an ear infection, a bad one. Is that tube not working anymore? Not sure. He got an oral antibiotic and ear drops. He's going back in two weeks, anyway, for his yearly exam, and she said if his ear wasn't markedly better, she was sending us back to the ENT.

She also, because of his drippy nose the past few weeks, advised me to give him Calritin for the next few weeks, because seasonal allergies are really bad for a lot of people right now, and she thinks that's what's causing the drippy nose. Yay, not only do we have to put ear drops in, give him an oral (liquid) antibiotic once daily, we now have to give him liquid Claritin as well.

All of the above are going over with the boy as well as you might imagine. I had to sit on him and use my legs to pin his arms down this evening to put the ear drops in. As for the liquid meds? I bribe him with extra juice boxes. He is normally allowed to have only two of the tiny-sized juice boxes a day, and knowing this, he hoards them and reserves them for late in the day. I told him he could have one extra juice box per dosage if he took it without incident, and this evening that actually seemed to work.

There are days, weeks, even, when I feel like all I am doing is treading water. This has been one of those weeks.