Niko had his 9 month check up on Saturday, which was a day of Great Trials and Tribulations.
It snowed and then it sleeted, and we were late to the doctor’s office, but the weather was so terrible that a lot of patients canceled their appointments. This turned out to be super good for us, because apparently our doctor canceled our appointment, but nobody called to let us know this and reschedule. Ha ha! How droll! But since there’d been so many cancellations, we were able to squeeze in to see some random doctor.
Dr. Random very obviously worked with babies a lot and knew their language and enjoyed them. He also made jokes about Niko growing up and having sex with girls. It was… weird. He is 9 months old. Why sexualize him?
Also, Niko apparently has a tiny head and is falling on the growth charts, or else my growth chart figurin’ is wrong. He is now 28 1/2 inches tall and weighs 22 pounds and 6 ounces, which puts him in the 50th percentile. According to my calculations, 3 months ago he was in the 75th percentile. However, the doctor didn’t say anything about him falling behind, so I’m going to assume I was just wrong. HOWEVER, the nurse measured Niko’s head about 8 times with two different tape measures and then the doctor measured it 3 times with yet another tape measure, and apparently the dude just has a small head. It’s 44cm around, and in the 25th percentile.
Which makes it super odd that sunglasses and hats don’t fit his melon, as he has an undersized head.
Unusual for me, I did not research What Goes On At A 9 Month Check Up. I usually look into These Things, as I need to Be Prepared and Know What To Expect. So I was all set for vaccinations, and thus unprepared for the sucker punch of blood labs.
They took blood!
From his tiny arm!
From the even tinier vein in that arm!
Sorry, baby. You seem to have inherited my thin, “thread-like,” “rolling,” super crappy veins.
Nesko held Niko in his lap while blood was taken, and I tried not to pace around and cry. IT WAS HARD.
Then we went out to the car and Nesko made me eat 2 hamburgers because I looked like death (I had a cold or something) and then we went home and I took a nap. I woke up when my parents came over, but only because I love them. If it were anyone else, I would have stayed in that bed. (again, a cold or something.)
Niko woke up and got excited to see them.
Then we went to Nesko’s family for their Slava, which is a celebration of their family’s patron saint (St. Nicholas), only it’s a fasting holiday so we ate fish and there were a lot of strangers and Niko cried because OMG STRANGERS. There were also his little cousins (note: not technically cousins) who are sweet kids but also were bored and loudly rambunctious.
Poor little Niko was up too late.
So was poor little mama.
On the other hand, those same strangers shoved money into Niko’s pockets because apparently that is What You Do with a baby. This is a tradition I can get behind.
Considering how boring our lives are, it was a super busy day.
I also forgot to ask the doctor about the speck of a rash on Niko’s arm: eczema or RING WORM? I’ve been fretting about this for a week and also trying to figure out how he’d come into contact with ring worm (aliens?) and come up with nothing. Nesko looked at it and agreed with me that duh, it was just eczema and then he pointed out that it looks nothing at all like ring worm except it’s vaguely roundish sort of kind of if you ignore part of it.
Then on Sunday Nesko and I ran around and cleaned up and did dishes and found out our visiting guests were visiting for less time than we thought, so we went out to eat instead of making pizza, and Niko got to sample bits of Persian food and charm everyone at the restaurant.
Then he came home and ran a fever and had a snotty nose and was an all around crankenpuss, but he seems to be doing better today.
(I made pizza for dinner anyway.)