Happy horrible St. Patrick's Day.

DW had an 8 AM well baby check up this morning. Why do they make appointments this early? To annoy me. Of course, my baby who wakes every two hours during the night does not rouse a bit when I walk into his room at 7:15, turn on the lights and tell him "time to get up, baby."  He just rolls over and keeps sleeping.  Babies do this kind of thing all the time.  Always messing with you.  "Oh you WANT me to get up?  Then, no.  I shall sleep."

I had to pick him up to wake him.  Which made him cry.  Which made me sad.

AW was mad we were leaving the house.  He was mad daddy wasn't coming with us to the doctor.  He was mad we were taking mommy's car instead of daddy's car...(it just goes on from here for the next two hours.  He was mad about everything we were doing.)

I did not get to drink any coffee before we left the house.

It was cold this morning so I had to put all the hats and coats and blankets and whatnot on the kids.  When we get to the medical center on post, I find a decent parking space. I pull out the ol' double stroller because I wasn't sure how far of a walk we had to the doctor and my back was hurting from hauling kids and diaper bag around all weekend.

So I realize as we enter the hospital that somehow the stroller seats got soaking wet over the weekend. We have been leaving it on the back porch instead of taking it inside and I guess it rained the other night and I completely forgot about that.  So of course AW was now soaking wet.  And of course I did not bring any extra clothes for him.

We get checked-in for our appointment and wait for them to call our names.  It is our first time seeing a doctor at this post so I am expecting some kind of problem checking-in, but it all goes fine.

Now, I try not to complain about military health care.  We have had mostly positive experiences and it is completely free for goodness sakes.  The main gripe I have is consistency in the systems as you go from post to post.  That, and that sometimes you get excellent doctors and nurses and sometimes you get ones, that, um, leave you without much confidence they know what they are doing.

Our new pediatrician, is, well, nice, I guess, but seems like the most frazzled person ever.  You know the equipment they use to look in the kids' ears and eyes, etc?  She accidentally ripped it off the wall and had to have a tech come put it back on.  Yikes.  And then she didn't seem to have access to any of DW's information from his past doctors on file.  I had to show her his growth chart from an app I have on my iPhone. Another yikes. And then, she said she didn't have access to his vaccination information. She convinced me we would have to go get the hard copy we keep of our shot record and bring it back to show them before they would administer the vaccinations.  AHHHHH!!!

LADY,  do you know how hard it was to get these kids here in the first place?  And now you want me to put all their hats and jackets back on, go back out to the parking lot, pack them and the stroller back into the car without their coats because you can't wear coats in the car seat, drive home, take them out of the car, put the coats back on, carry the infant carrier while holding AW's hand up the steps and through the front entrance, go inside, find a piece of paper, convince AW to leave again as he is trying to pull off his coat, haul the kids back down the steps, take off the coats, buckle them back into the car, drive back to the medical center, get out of the car, put the coats back on (screw the stroller this time and deal with the back pain), muscle-failure lift the infant carrier while holding AW's hand, drop the diaper bag in the parking lot, spill baby socks and cloth diapers all over, curse loudly, get giggled at by some maintenance men, drag AW through the medical center, pick him up after he falls and bumps his nose and then sit, again, in the waiting room where AW is crying loudly about going home and his nose and DW is now crying so you are trying to feed him but some 8-year-old kid is gawking at you so you stop because you feel weird, and then you finally get called into the room for the vaccination and the nurse HANDS YOU A COPY OF THE SHOT RECORD THEY SAID THEY DIDN'T HAVE.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

AHHHH!!!

AHHHH....such is life in the military medical system.

Anyway.  We took these fun St. Patrick's day pictures.  AW is only smiling because I bribed him with green cupcakes.

The main take-away from our check-up is that DW overall seems to be in good health.  His height is good but weight is on the low side.  Considering AW has always been a munchkin - negative percentiles all around his first years and can still fit into a baby-sized St. Patrick's Day onesie at two and a half years old - I'm not too concerned about weight as long as he is on the chart.  Now he is just recovering from his shots. He really likes his Cars band-aids.