I had an appointment for Chloe’s two year check-up scheduled for yesterday and received a call from my Doctor’s office changing the appointment.

The change was in response to the brand new medical clinic having mould in the walls and the Doctors having to relocate for at least two weeks.

I was given the option of keeping the appointment and meeting at a clinic that was an additional thirty-minutes away from the already thirty minute drive I would be making or, I could wait and re-schedule for a later date. I opted to re-schedule. An hour in the car changes things entirely. The additional snacks alone would be too much given the eleventh hour planning.

I guess I felt as though two weeks wasn’t going to matter much when it comes to the two year growth chart, her development, her height compared to others her age or how many new verbs she might now be able to conjugate (in French)between now and then. We would certainly have time to master that walking backwards thing, our take-home assignment from the previous exam.

If this had been our first born however, I can tell you exactly what I would have done.

After purchasing masks,  I would have researched mould. How does it form? How does it spread? Toxicity levels? Have we been exposed unknowingly perhaps at our 18 month check-up? Have we been exposed at EVERY previous check-up? Do we have mould in our own walls? Should we have a skin sample sent to the lab along with swatches of fabric from our clothing those appointment days, which thankfully I have highlighted on a jumbo calendar tucked neatly in the safe next to the fabric?

I would then have no choice but to drive to Emerge stopping by the local walk-in clinic to count the number of vehicles in the parking lot. If the number exceeded three cars (one person in with a Doctor, one in another room with a cot wondering if the Doctor had forgotten about them, one in the waiting room wondering if the receptionist had left for the day and abandoned them on the dirty row of germ-filled chairs with a stack of magazines from 1987 to get them through the night) I would carry on to the hospital—at least there, someone would spot an emergency when they saw one. If I didn’t know where this 2 year old child ranked on “the chart” before playgroup tomorrow, I would have no choice but to trip over a series of made-up numbers and these expert-Moms would be onto me like Robeez on an 18 month old and not a day older.

I would rehearse ABC’s, Baa Baa Black Sheep and Twinkle Twinkle and curse the tunes being the same, confusing my child who could blow those other two year olds out of the water if she could just identify the lyrics as being unique but the tunes unforgivably alike. She’s already “off the chart” (Doctor’s words not mine) when it came to height for her age, high praise indeed when you really think about how important it is to be two and tall. I just need another big number to pull out of my diaper bag (a bag I hoped to be done with like those other show-offs carrying just their Driver’s licenses and a Starbucks card to flash to the world they’re done with diapers while they run alongside their two year olds backwards into the building.

Chloe will have her mould-free appointment when the building is ready. We’ll be told she’s the height she is, the weight she is, that she speaks some words, sings some songs—a mash-up of Twinkle Twinkle, ABC’s and Baa Baa Blacksheep. She wears strange outfits—combination eclectic hand-me-down mixed with bathing chic and that she can swan-dive backwards.