brigid | 3 year Check Up

Niko had his 3 year check up today, where we discussed:

His asthma (pretty much unchanged)

His mental acuity (recognition of colors, shapes, numbers, letters, etc)

How much we LOOOOOOVE poking him with sharp objects.

Poor dude had another blood draw to check for lead and anemia this time around. Unlike last time, he noticed the needle. Perhaps if I’d surprised him with another All! New! Experience!– perhaps a kitten?– it would have gone as well as last year’s blood draw. But alas, a shiny sticker and a sucker were not enough to distract him from someone jabbing him with a needle and stealing his precious life essence. I explained to him what was going to happen, then what WAS happening, and I think that helped. When the nurse put the rubber tie around his arm he said “Oh, this gives me an owie owie” and made a sad face, then bit into his lollypop. When she stuck the needle in, he said “Oh!” and tried to slap her away, but stayed pretty calm and still as we talked to him and held him. He got a Sesame Street bandage, which helped.

He doesn’t need any more vaccines until he is 5 years old, and our doctor decided to forgo the TB test until it’s required for kindergarten because he’s low risk for TB. He also FREAKED OUT when she tried to look in his mouth because he “didn’t want her to get it dirty” and cried when we laid him down so she could palpate his stomach/check his genitals. His lament? “I don’t want you to see me CRRRRYYYYYYY.” So we hid his face and he calmed down some.

The problem with making doctor appointments is that Nesko doesn’t get vacation days, which means if he takes a day off he doesn’t get paid for it, so we try to schedule appointments for when he goes in late to work, and that tends to coincide almost exactly with the danger zone of lunch time and nap time. So Niko is often a super cranky pants by the time it’s belly-checkin’ time. But he’s in general a laid back dude so frankly, it’s not THAT bad, and the staff are all super great at being patient and managing the situation, working with him, etc.

He is, if I remember correctly, 36 pounds and also he is 38 1/2 inches, which means that in two more feet he’ll be taller than I am. He’s about in the 85th percentile for weight, if I remembered his weight correctly, and 65th percentile for height.

I think I was going to write more about this, but Niko woke up from his nap halfway through the very first sentence, so whatever I had intended to write vanished into the ether. Ah well.

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