Post Pediatrician Ramblings

I took some kids to the doctor today. One had a well-visit. Three had to get flu shots. One had to be checked for wheezing, a follow-up to a visit two weeks ago. That's a lot of stuff, right? Well, that's nothing compared to the to-do list I left with. Check this out:

-- Get eye exam for one kid. (Poor thing bombed her in-office eye exam...just like her momma!)
-- Get chest xray for one kid.
-- Get KUB xray for one kid.
-- Fill prescription -- two different meds -- for one kid
-- Get over the counter meds for one kid.
-- Bring one back in a month.

In the next 5 weeks, four of my kids will have their regular well-visits. Some people think of November and December as the Holiday Season. I think of those months as "Time to Reconnect with My Pediatrician Season." Which is nice, because I have a wonderful pediatrician, and love chatting with her. How many of you are facebook friends with your pediatrician? See, she's just that awesome. In fact, she's so awesome that when she moved her practice to a town 25 minutes away from us, we stayed with her; we make that drive because we can't imagine anyone else caring for our kids. With gas prices as high as they are, this means that you have to be pretty sick to warrant a trip to the doctor's office at my house.

So by the time I picked them up at school, got them all in and out of the doctor's office, got them all fed (I heart In-n-Out), stopped briefly at home to get them changed into soccer gear, got them to their practice field, raced to pick up the little one from daycare, swung by the bank to make a deposit that reaaaaallllly needed to go in today, stopped by the pharmacy to drop off the prescription, I had been in my car for over four hours. Thank you Bay Bridge malfunction for making the roads ridiculous today.

In case you are wondering, if you spend 4+ hours in a car with rambunctious children and too many containers of soda/coffee, here are a few things that might happen to you:

Your 7-year old girl might spill her root beer on your 9 year old son's absolute favorite drawing, the one he did of a monkey in a school desk, raising his hand and saying: "Would you mind repeating everything you said after 'LISTEN CAREFULLY'?" And he might respond with a howl filled with so much despair that the flowers on the side of the road will wilt.

Your 5-year old might dump her french fries on the floor with just the right timing so that the 9 and 11 year old boys will smush them into the carpet when they climb over the backpacks in a headlong effort to get into the back seat.

Your 5-year old might kick your coffee cup while attempting to hightail it out of the front seat, where she is not supposed to be because "I have a cup of coffee there and don't spill it!" The coffee could get all over the diaper bag and all over the Kindergartner's homework assignment.

Your 3 year old might flick a straw full of Dr. Pepper in your face as you are trying to unbuckle her...which means you might walk around the house for 5 or 10 minutes with Dr. Pepper speckles all over your glasses before you manage to clean them.

You might notice, after getting rid of three of them at the soccer field, that a few more of them also spilled their fries in the back seat.

You might yell a lot at your offspring. You might hear yourself saying quite a few things you thought you'd never say, like "You never learn, you never ever learn!" because you've heard that one before, in your own childhood, and could have sworn you were immune from such nonsense.

You might arrive home with no plan for dinner, but an acute awareness of where exactly in the fridge is the last bottle of Pipeline Porter made with 100% Hawaiian Kona Coffee.

Put a fork in me: I'm done.

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