Well-child appointments. With seven kids, the amount of time spent in doctors’ offices for well-being and maintenance-type appointments alone is more than most families spend in doctors’ offices all year.
The pediatrician is almost an hour away, and of course there’s the obligatory wait, and then 2 kids to see… so every time we go to the pediatrician, it is an Event. We used to stop at Chik-Fil-A afterwards, but after a $25+ lunch for 7 of us, we opted for PBJs in the van ever after.
Yesterday we went to the pediatrician for Grace and Patience. It always makes me laugh to see how my 7 kids and I pretty much fill the waiting room. We would have been positively crowded in the examining room, so I left Ben and Nate to their books and took the rest. My favorite nurse was there, and she told a second nurse how amazingly well behaved my kids are. They kept exclaiming over the boys reading in the waiting room (like that was hard for them—good grief!), the girls sitting on the chairs nicely, etc. I guess they see enough children to know mine were exceptional, but I knew and saw they weren’t perfect—the interruptions of the adult speaking, the times I needed to repeat my instructions before I was obeyed, the greediness and selfishness in choosing a sticker… but because the nurse’s perception was not as acute as mine, she was impressed, so much so that when I asked for a box of four 8-oz, ready-to-use formula cans, she gave me 7! And three small cans of powder! Oh, hurrah.
On the way home we pass Aldi, and it made me ill to think I would drive by the very place I was to go thirty minutes after getting home, so I let the boys stay in the van with Patie while the big girls and I did the shopping for our Mega-Cooking Day. In and out of the parking lot in twenty minutes… I love that.
Later Ben and Grace and I went to do the rest of the shopping and errands, and Ben talked me out of buying autumn plates. He also decided that I would not get $40 use out of a single jogging stroller, so I shouldn’t buy that, either. Mark never wants me to go shopping without Ben.
Today will be spent in deboning two turkey breasts, laundry, and getting my house to a point of non-embarrassment, for tomorrow we have a Big Day of cooking with three moms and fifteen children here. Should be fun.
1 comment:
Aren't we on the way-ish to your pediatrician's office? Come by here for lunch next time! I don't suppose you schedule these trips all close together, though.
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