I took car-seat baby in for her 1 year check-up along with my trusty four year old sidekick.

When the baby was nearly finished filling her pants, stinking up the very small waiting area and fouling the room for at least a 48 hour wait-it-out period or a full-on Febrezing and/or insecticiding, whichever came first, Ellie surprised me with a question for the Doctor.

Ellie: Um, could you also look at my brain?

Doctor: Sure Ellie. What do you think is wrong with your brain? (giggling)

Why is it when I ask the kids to make their beds they forget and blame it on being young and therefore lacking any short or long term memory, but in an attempt to brush off a silly health related question, I tell them “the next time we’re at the Doctor’s office we’ll ask her about that” and six months later it pops into her brain…a brain that may or may not require evaluation.

Ellie: One time Hanna and I were running and we bonked heads. My Mom said we could die or something, like hockey players.

False.

I did tell them after one too many seemingly coincidental head-butts while meeting each other in a race around the family room ottoman that head injuries were very serious and people can suffer life-long repercussions.

Also, I found it a little odd that after jamming Chloe’s arms like they were pin cushions, she started to bleed from her standard vaccines. Ellie was mortified, I kept my own arms elevated above my heart and tried to breathe through what I thought could have been a disastrous situation for a woozy Mommy.

Ellie asked the nurse to put band-aids on Chloe. She was very rushed, so much in fact, I worried she might have been feeding Chloe bat poison through the clear vial. She quickly told Ellie she would rather not put band-aids on a baby because (it would have meant leaving the room to get some) there was a huge risk if the baby were to remove the band-aid in the car on the way home and choke on it. I’m afraid of many things; shark attacks, bats, Dateline, but my 12 month old baby having the manual dexterity and strength to stretch through a snug, five point harness, her coat, sweater and shirt, tear a band-aid from her skin, fish it all back through the three sleeve obstacle course, insert it into her mouth, like the taste so much she wanted to swallow it leading her to gag and die isn’t one of them.

I simply don’t have room for another band-aid swallowing 5km run.