Nothing Wrong With Those Lungs!

Ben had his 5 year-old well exam this morning. He is 47 1/2 inches tall, and 43.8 pounds. The doctor commented that he has had quite a growth spurt this year -- his height is even further off the chart than it used to be. She showed me the growth chart where she plots his height every year... the dots are always floating above the top line... this one was floating way above the line, so lonely out there in space.. According to this height predictor, Ben's adult height will be 6 '3 (and there's no way to enter 1/2 inch so I rounded down to 3 '11 instead of up to 4 feet). ("How is that possible??" will be Joel's exact words when he reads this).

I brought up my concerns about his weight, which I do every year, and she blows me off every year, saying his weight has always been around 70-75th percentile, and his BMI is fine, so I have no reason to be concerned about the fact that I CAN SEE EVERY SINGLE BONE IN HIS BODY.

Since he's entering kindergarten, Ben needed quite the round of shots at this appointment -- five separate sticks! I mean, my God, that would have made ME cry! I tried to prep him for it while we were waiting... thought I was doing a good job as a parent... I told him the story of how when I got my shots at my 5 year old appointment I didn't understand what "shot" meant and thought I was going to get shot, like with a gun (not true but it sounds good when you tell it that way and it made him laugh). I told him how I hid under the table and kicked the doctor. That part is, unfortunately, true.

I also broke out the story of how when his Grandpa (my dad) was a little boy he had polio, and how he woke up one morning and couldn't move his arm. I used this story to explain why he needed to get the shots, to keep kids from getting sick like Grandpa did. He was quite interested in this, and asked me to tell the story twice.

Of course, none of this seemed to make the shots any better. I held him, he SCREAMED BLOODLY MURDER from the first stick to the last, and after the third one when she switched to the other arm to do two more (TWO MORE! THOSE BARBARIANS!) he was kicking and screaming and I had to pin his legs in mine.

When it was all done, and he had five bandaids and a cherry ice popsicle, he looked at me with big brown tear-stained puppy dog eyes and said softly, "Ouch."

I felt terrible, of course, by that time beginning to think that polio might be preferable to subjecting him to such torture. But I reminded him that he doesn't need a single shot now until he's eleven. "By that time," I told him, "you'll be taller than me, at the rate you're growing!" That made him smile, a lttle.