SHADE'S 18 MONTH CHECKUP

KELLEN HERE. I took Shady to his 18 month checkup a couple of days ago. He was super cute for the doctor, and she was very impressed by his vocabulary. He started showing off for her saying numbers, names of body parts, and "uh oh" when he droped something. He even pointed to my pen and said, "yellow". (Luckily, the pen was yellow. That is the only color he knows, but the doctor didn't need to know that). Later, he pointed to a letter and said, "What is it?". The pediatrician was amazed and said it is very rare for kids that young to put three words together like that. (Actually, I'm not sure that he realizes they are three different words. He says it all together like, "Whasit?").

Anyway, the checkup went great until the shots. The nurse asked me to pin his hands down while she gave him three shots. He was staring right at me crying with a look of betrayal on his face. It was horrible. It didn't help that the nurse didn't know what she was doing, so all three pokes bled A LOT. Then, she pricked his finger to take an iron test, and she didn't put the bandaid on right. As soon as she walked out the door, the bandaid fell off. I yelled out the door for another bandaid, and by the time I turned around, Shade had blood all over his chest, face, hair, and arms. He was pretty scared and crying.

Anyway, Shady is healthy, but too skinny. He is in the 75th percentile in length, the 90th in head size, but only the 25th in weight. She said if he were any skinnier they would have to intervene. I'm not sure what that means, but I don't want anybody "intervening" with my son. So I took him to McDonalds.

Okay, time for a sweet story. I got a migrain headache Wednesday night. It was only my second ever. I noticed something wasn't right when I was at Boy Scouts, and I looked at Max Montini. He only had one eyball. That's when I realized I had a blind spot in my right eye. I recognized that as the first symptom the last time I got a migrain, so I quickly left for home. By the time I got home, my right arm and hand were painfully numb. Then the pounding in my head started. I puked until there was nothing left in me. I went delisional, and had a hard time forming sentences or remembering simple words. Kathy told me the next day that she gave me four Excedrin and four Ibuprofin, but all I remember is me begging her for drugs and her refusing to give me any. I was trying to figure out why she was torchering me.

Anyway, it was a long, horrible night, and the next morning wasn't much better. I stayed home from work, but Kathy had to go to school for a few hours, leaving me with Shade. I was worried that I wasn't going to be able to take care of him. I didn't need to worry. When Shade woke up, I told him I was sick. He didn't understand, so I told him I was sad (a word he knows). He climbed onto my bed, handed me his teddy bear, gave me three kisses, and started reading me some books. He took care of me for about two hours until Kathy got home. I never got him breakfast or anything, but he didn't complain. It is amazing to see such a young little boy being considerate of other people and trying to make them feel better.

One more cute Shade story: He has a book called "Blue Hat, Green Hat" where a turkey keeps wearing clothes on the wrong body parts (socks on hands, pants on head, etc). As Shade turns the pages, he will say, "Whaaaaat! . . . Whaaaaat! . . . Whaaaaaaaaat!" Adorable.