The 4 Year Check-up: The Good, The Funny & The Painful

Yesterday was Jake's 4 year check-up with our pediatrician. Overall, the pediatrician said he looked GREAT and was progressing incredibly well. His assessment of the whole event wasn't quite as positive...First he told me that he didn't know he had to pass a test to be 4 (based on all of the questions she asked him and the things she asked him to do). Then he said "mommy, it hurts too much to be 4, if I give all my presents back, can I go back to being 3 again?" Thus, the inclusion of "The Painful" in the title of this post...

The exam started with a review of nutrition and we all know how expansive (NOT) Jake's diet is. Although she at first seemed a little concerned about the fact that he eats little or no meat, when she subsequently took a glance at this height/weight chart, she agreed that we were, indeed, still growing a "big'n"!!! LOL LOL

As far as the stats go...Jake's ratio continues to trend in the right direction with his weight (41.4lbs) in the 85th percentile and his height (43.25") in the 95th percentile. The nurse remarked that at least his height was back on the chart this time...well, a little bit anyway. All sounded good to me!! And for those keeping track...this means he gained 7.4lbs in the past year and grew 3.25"!!!!! He's been consistently growing over 3" a year, let's hope that slows down just a tad, eh?

The next part of the exam included a series of very interesting questions regarding developmental progress, including:

• What is a banana? (He gave several very funny responses before she convinced him that she was looking for a serious answer)
• What is a lake? He mentioned something about seaweed and she asked him to tell her more and so he continued on to say you could swim in the lake or fish in the lake and that means that fish live in there and swim around in stuff that looks an awful lot like seaweed. Seemed to be enough of an answer for her.
• She asked him if he could draw a face and when he did with his hand, she asked him if he had drawn a circle. He said no, and she tried to lead him back towards a yes until he made it clear that only Mickey has a circle for a head, we all really have ovals. Hmmmm, she wasn't sure what to make of that one and decided to move on??
• She asked him to point to a circle in the room and he not only did that, but he showed her an oval, square, rectangle and then began to show her the difference between acute and obtuse angles in some triangles. At that point, she gave me quite a look. I just shrugged, what could I say?
• She asked him if he could count to 20 and he asked her if she meant in Spanish or regular? And then preceded to do both. He told her that he was still working on backwards from 20 to 1 in Spanish, but he got mixed up once in a while. Then, when she didn't respond, he asked me if he did it wrong because she really wanted him to count by 10's or 5's or 2's?? I didn't even look at her at that point.
• Next came ...What are curtains? To which he replied "the things that keep the sun out when mommy wants to sleep late on Saturdays". I think she was feeling much better about the appropriateness of that answer right up until he felt the need to ask "Dr. Prosswimmer, did you never know that curtains go east and west and blinds go north and south?" She wasn't quite sure what to make of that so she said something like "uhhh, no, I'm not sure I understand"...so he used his hands to show her how one goes East and West (and yes, he somehow knows that East is to the right and West is to the left, and North is up and South is down...I think I was about 20 when I learned that...LOL)

At that point, she said there really didn't seem to be a reason to go much further...clearly he wasn't experiencing any developmental delays!! And we both had to laugh!! (Me more at the fact that she hadn't even really hit on the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what he REALLY knows...what is a banana?!?!? Come on now...)

After watching him walk, skip, hop on each foot, jump (at which point he told her he could jump much higher on his trampoline...to which she responded by covering her ears and saying she was going to pretend she didn't hear that) and gallop, we were off to take the hearing and eye test. He passed both of those with flying colors and then we were on to the "painful" part of the event...the injections.

Now, for those of you who have never had to go through taking your child for immunizations, let me tell you it ranks right up there with having a root canal withOUT novocain. I slept very badly the night before just thinking about what this was going to be like...because, for some ungodly reason, they felt compelled to tell me when I made the appointment that there were "quite a few immunizations" at the 4 yr appt. I felt like saying, "hey, thanks for that, and what exactly am I going to do with that advance knowledge besides dreading and worrying about it?!?!" As it turned out "quite a few" equated to 4 - 5 shots. I chose the flu-mist option to cut it down to 4, but holy cow, was that bad enough!!!!!!!!!!!

The way this horrible event plays out is that you lay your unsuspecting child down on the exam table with his little legs hanging off one end. All the while, he's looking up at you innocently with eyes that say "what's going on, mommy?" and the complete and total trust that comes with that period during childhood when you never think your mommy would EVER let anything bad happen to you...oy vey.

Then the nurse asks you to lay across him and hold his arms and at that point, he stares at you incredulously like...WHAT'S GOING ON, mommy??? Then she proceeds to stabs him with 4 injections...2 in each leg. Needless to say, after the first one, all hell breaks loose and for the remaining 3 you are forced to try to ignore the begging and pleading of the little love of your life to "STOP HER MOMMY, PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NO MORE, MOMMY, PLEASE!!!!!!!!!! With intense crying and screaming interspersed in between the pleading and begging. Oh, talk about a mommy low point...it feels like a trip to the confessional in needed after that act of sabotage!

He was a real trooper and although I believe he would have surely pummeled the nurse had I let him go, he was content to let me carry him out of there while still softly crying. I had promised him a trip to the little store right next door to pick out a few "comfort toys" and a snack and so off we went. The trauma began to wear off once he saw all of the floor puzzles he had to choose from (he picked a solar system one...no surprise there) and carried it up to the front of the store. There he found 2 beanie babies which he asked if I could buy for him so that they could lay on his two boo-boo legs in the car and give them kisses the whole way home...no way to say no to that one! (These have subsequently been named "Honey Bear" and "Bunny Bear" because he likes calling them "Honey Bunny"...very cute)

Then came the Jake line of the week...as he handed the bears and puzzle to the lady at the counter she said "well, you must have done something pretty darn good to have earned all of these nice things"...to which he replied, "I just got shotted!!!" When she said, "Excuse me??" He said, "that bad girl next door shot me 4 times!!" I had to quickly explain that we were talking about "shots"...as in injections. This continued as we went to Shoprite to pick out his bday cake (cake #4) as he insisted on telling everyone he ran into that he had just gotten shot 4 times. Needless to say, I had a LOT of explaining to do...LOL

Well that's it for now! Still praying for sunshine on Sat!!!!!!!!!!!