I had forgotten what a healthy child was like!

Well we made it in to see the pediatrician today for Noah’s 18-month well-visit check up. That’s right “well-visit”. Yep, we got to sit on the side of the waiting room for well kids, not the quarantined “as if you have the plague” side for “sick kids” only. The ironic and completely sad thing is that when we walked in I saw a mom with 3 small children in the “sick kids” waiting room and they happened to be Noah’s cousins, whom I’m pretty sure he infected when he played with them last weekend. Now they all have his crud. I mouthed an “I’m soooo sorry” to Amy through the waiting room glass separating us. As difficult as out last 4 weeks have been with illness, I can at least look on the bright side and be relieved I’m not taking care of a sick 4 year old along with sick 3-month old twins…Anyway, Noah, finally, got a clean bill of health. (It felt very odd to not leave the pediatrician office and head straight to the pharmacy…I bet the pharmacist is wondering where I have been the last few days….) Noah dutifully screamed throughout the entire visit and acted as if Dr Colon was absolutely murdering him when in fact she did not do one remotely painful thing to him. In that respect, I was relieved that the only other patients in the entire doctor’s office happened to be our family members! He weighed in at 25 pounds, 10 ounces and was a whopping 34 inches tall which basically all means he is very tall and fairly skinny. He has consistently been at least in the 90th percentile for height all along so it looks like we’re gonna have an amazon on our hands. David is already imagining sports positions for him to play….although now that I am a mom, I think I would have to take a valium to watch my sweet baby play any rough sport. Now when watching college football in the fall I actually cry when I see a player get injured because I feel so bad for that poor kid’s mamma somewhere….but I digress.

Noah’s language skills are beginning to form and it is so much fun watching him learn something new. As many things as he learns each day, his favorite word to say is still “da-da”. He wakes up calling for David, says it in his dreams, wanders around the house calling for David, opens up all the closed doors calling Daddy’s name, etc. I take care of him all day long but ALL I hear is Da-Da, which I know is normal but at times it is annoying. At times it is embarrassing. We went to the grocery store today and Noah was sitting up in the shopping cart and, I am not exaggerating at all, to every single human being that got within10 feet of him he looked them STRAIGHT in the eyes and in his LOUDEST voice ever shouted “Daaa-Daaa!” very pointedly as if he was exclaiming “Ah-ha, I have finally found you!” The first few times it was funny, especially when he did it to the 80-year old woman…but then it became a little embarrassing as if I was carting around some poor illegitimate kid who had no idea who his daddy was. He singled out this one particular man, who I must say looked NOTHING like David, and we happened to run into him on like every single aisle and without missing a beat, Noah screamed “Da-Da” straight to his face every time. By the 10th time this man seemed a little concerned over this development and probably thought I was stalking him for child support or something. Other than that it was a pretty good shopping experience—I didn’t get up to the counter with 4 jars of cinnamon I didn’t want (he is so sneaky), crushed up teddy grahams in my hair, I wasn’t cursing and there was no one complaining that he had thrown goldfish at them. But…there’s always next week.