A Flurry of Visits
The past two weeks has been a flurry of appointments with various doctors. I’ve been putting off going to the dentist for a loooooong time. Like, almost a decade. I know, I know, but I’m terrified of going. Anyway, I’ve taken Ethan in the past, but it was time for him to go again and Gideon was old enough to go now, too. So I called up and made appointments for everyone, Aurora included. The kids came out with flying colors and high praise from the dentist. I, on the other hand, have four cavities. Big surprise, I know. So now I get to go back again once the baby is born. The receptionist looked up at me with a smile on her face and stated, in all seriousness, "You can go earlier, like next week, if you don’t want to be numbed up." I just stared blankly at her until she turned back to the computer and said, "October it is then."
There was also a trip to the doctor to get Ethan’s final shots so that he is totally up to date for kindergarten. That was fun. Let’s just say that Ethan does not do well when it comes to people stabbing him with needles, no matter how quickly they do it or how painless they claim it will be. Let’s face it, shots always hurt. I don’t know why the nurses insist on telling children it won’t hurt a bit. After about 20 minutes of shrieking and crying (long after the shots were over and done with and we had checked out with the clerk and gotten in the car) Ethan downgraded his hysterics to mere whimpers for the remainder of the ride home. Like I said, fun.
Yesterday was busy again. In the morning, Gideon had a basic check up to establish care with his doctor. On the way there, Ethan asked, "Is this appointment for immunizations or is it a well-child check?" I told you we had been going to the doctor a lot lately. The appointment went fine and we had a rousing game of "How many red things can you find?" while we waited for the doctor to come in quickly followed by the green, blue, yellow, orange, pink, and purple versions. The doctor had him open up and say ahh, listened to his heart beat (which must have been difficult because Gideon was attempting to talk his ear off throughout the entire visit) and proclaimed him a healthy boy. We went to the clerk and made him another appointment because he needed a few more shots to be up to Oregon standards. At the desk, the clerk printed out a letter showing when Gideon’s next appointment would be. The top half of the page was in english and the bottom half was the same info, only repeated in spanish. She then proceeded to cross out the spanish portion with an exhuberance suggesting that I was not allowed to read that half before handing it to me. Perhaps I needed to give the code word to be allowed to read the spanish part and she did not want me accidentally decoding it. Who knows, but I thought it was a really strange thing to do. I wanted to ask her, in spanish of course, what it said under all the scribbles. But alas, I am mono-lingual.
I had an OBGYN check up in the afternoon ("How’s everything going? The baby moving a lot? Good. See you in two weeks.) which went pretty uneventfully. The nurse who took my vitals made an odd comment though. When she weighed me, she said, "Huh, no weight gain this week." I asked if that was a bad thing. She over-cheerfully assured me it was fine, just fine. I spent the next few minutes while I waited for the doctor wondering if my baby was alright, or perhaps the nurse just thought I looked slightly more obese this week than two weeks ago. The doctor seemed totally unconcerned when I asked him about it, so I assume it was the second option.
So finally, for now anyway, we will have some free days. Which is good because my parents are coming into town to visit for a week and a half on Saturday. Unfortunately, a new Ikea opened up yesterday right next to the airport which means traffic will be severely backed up on all roads leading to the airport for the next few days. So the drive to the airport will be fun, too. Oh well, at least when all the hoopla dies down, I’ll now be able to finally try those wonderful little meatballs I keep hearing about.
Our usual bathtime time routine goes something like this. Everybody plunks into the tub. They play and splash for a while, then I soap up Aurora and Gideon, rinse them off, and pull them out of the tub. Ethan then drains the tub and turns on the shower. He’s a big boy now (5 1/2) and so needs to take showers, for which we have had "shower lessons". These lessons have mostly consisted of me sitting next to the shower while Ethan flips around in the spray. I get to say things like, "Make sure you rub the soap on your tummy. Big circles. And your arms…the underside of them, too. And don’t forget your armpits." Extreme micromanagement. It’s the newest thing! It’s X-TREME! The last few times, however, I have not really needed to give instructions. 
Day One of our excessive heat warning has come and gone and we didn’t get voted off the island yet. I have to admit that I haven’t watched not even one episode of Survivor ever, so I’ll stop with the show references before I embarrass myself! But I digress…the point is that we hit 102 degrees today and didn’t melt into puddles of goo. Now, before I start hearing you say things like, "Boohoo! 102 degrees! What a wuss!", I’d like to point out that the upper eighties is the normal high temperature around here. Because of this fact, most homes in the area…DO NOT HAVE AIR-CONDITIONING! Our apartment…DOES NOT HAVE AIR-CONDITIONING! 
