April 2008

Keeping three kids happy while waiting at the doctors office is a difficult task. Usually we get through the waiting room without a problem… the kids can rearrange the chairs, roll around on the floor, take magazines off of the shelf and occasionally sit quietly in my lap and read a book. It’s that tiny examination room that presents the problem. I know they keep the place clean but the bottom line is that doctors offices are where sick people go and I would rather we keep our germs to ourselves. To accomplish that I let the kids pick toys (or costumes) from home to bring and play with while we wait. Typically we bring matchbox cars, magna doodles, or some other SMALL item they can play with QUIETLY while keeping their hands occupied. Once our pediatrician comes in I bring out stickers and crayons to entertain the kids who are not actually there to see the doctor. Notice I didn’t say stickers, crayons and paper. Each doctors office comes will a large sheet of germ free paper on the examination table, right off the roll. They think its a TON of fun to stick stickers all over that sheet. It gives the kids a big surface to write and play on and the staff doesn’t care because they just rip the sheet off and throw it away after we leave anyway. Sometimes we’ve even drawn roads on the paper for the matchbox cards to drive on. This typically works well for me and it keeps them playing on the paper. However, even with the costume and my bag of tricks, our well visit this week was QUITE EVENTFUL. If you have a minute to read about that circus like experience, click here. I think you’ll find it worth the read.

To find out what works for other people, visit Rocks in My Dryer.

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My oldest and youngest had well visits today. Our trip to the pediatrician’s office was a circus act in and of itself. I made the appointment for 8:30a.m. The nice thing about early appointments is that we don’t have to wait long in the waiting room. The hard part is that it takes an insane amount of work to get the three kids fed, dressed (they can’t exactly show up in dirty underwear and pjs) and in the minivan by 8:10…not to mention the fact that I usually try to look presentable myself which means I have to actually shower and do something with my hair. Thanks to my wonderful hubby we were backing out of the driveway by 8:19. Thanks to the fact that the office clock is slower than the minivan clock, we were only 3 min late.

I wish I had a picture of how we looked as we walked into the office this rainy morning. I was carrying the baby, and holding my 2 year olds hand as well as my purse, my diaper bag, and my bag of tricks (toys, crayons, stickers to occupy them in the waiting and examination room). Straggling behind was my son dressed in his camo pants and shirt, wearing his superman “goggles” and his red cape and carrying his Lighting McQueen umbrella. The funny thing about that umbrella is that the girls and I get more wet than normal waiting for him to put it up and take it down. Oh well, he enjoys it and we are used to getting wet b/c I never bother with an umbrella… I’d need a third hand for that and if I had that I am sure one of the kids would just end up poking me or each other in the eye with it!

We signed in and sat down. As soon as we are seated and got the books off the shelf and the kid chairs arranged, our name is called, which means it is time to gather it all up. My little superhero leads the way down the hall. My two year old is in the middle calling for Dr Hackett. Mommy and baby and our boatload of stuff were trailing behind.

Time to strip the baby to be weighed and convince my son to take off his shoes and cape for the scale (I don’t really know why the MA was insistent the cape had to come off for this.. how much could it weigh really?). I was able to convince my son to brave standing on the scale and then attempted to put my baby on the scale without her falling off even though she was trying to grab my shirt the entire time. Not sure how accurate her measurement was, but she said it was good enough.

Next on the agenda was holding the hot compress on my baby’s heel so she could get a heel prick. Not too hard. Holding her down for the heel prick while the MA is squeezing her foot like crazy to get the blood out (next to impossible)! Changing my baby’s diaper is like bull fighting. I am not exaggerating. She is constantly flipping over and flailing the entire time… Now I am attempting to hold her still while someone squeezes blood out of her. The whole time I am convincing the other two that “it is ok.” Meanwhile my 2yr old is watching wide eyed and saying over and over “uh-oh” “uh-oh” b/c she sees all the blood on the baby’s foot. My son is singing “Jingle Bell Rock” (not sure why he thought that song would comfort his sister but it was a valiant effort).

The MA then takes my son off for his vision and hearing tests. [You know your want more…]

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