Tall Girl

Yesterday we had back to back appointments in the morning.  At 8:30 it was the monthly ultrasound for little brother, who is healthy, abusively active and opinionated about his space, and nicely big.  We took the girls with us and they were, to the extent possible for 15 and 32 months of age, perfect angels.  Val was mad when she couldn’t play with the console (controls on the ultrasound machine, which is essentially a computer, which makes it a flame to Valerie’s moth).  Sadie was bored and unhappy about being in the dark after the ultrasound proper and before the doctor came in to chat for a few minutes.  She also was sad about riding the elevator.  She used to love them, but along the line became scared of them.  I haven’t scanned the pictures from the ultrasound yet.

Immediately afterward, we had a 9:45 fifteen month checkup for Valerie on the other side of Brockton.  Traffic was wonderful.  As it also was on the way up from Middleboro, but it took nearly as long to go the short distance across Brockton.  Mainly that was because of an accident shortly before the lights where you cross onto VFW Parkway.

We barely had a chance to sit down before they called us in, which was awesome.  We’d also gone right in for the ultrasound, being first of the day.  Sadie was fine, friendly to the nurse and all, until she actually saw the doctor, who is apparently imprinted on her brain as the height of terror seven months after she last saw him.  I assured her the appointment was for Valerie and we were just hanging out.  Valerie was fine.  A little squirmy for the stethescope and head measurement, but fine for weight and height.

Anyway, Valerie is tall.  Very tall.  I forget the number of inches exactly (ah, Deb says 31 2/3” and 19 lbs 7 oz), but she’s about 80th to 90th percentile for height, and between 4th and 10th for weight.  It all goes into height.  A few days ago the new neighbors brought their little boy outside to play with Valerie and Sadie.  He’s something like 5 months older than her.  They are the same exact height, and to all appearances would be taken for the same age or possibly him being a little younger.  If we’d taken the camera out with us, there’d be pictures of them in the sandbox or running around together.

Valerie was insulted by the shots she had to get yesterday, and was affected to an unusual degree by them later in the day.  It didn’t help that none of us got enough sleep.

On another note, they are partway into their project to go paperless at the medical center.  They’ve used wireless PDA devices for a long time for billing, and that will continue.  Now they have notebook computers - I thought they might use tablets - which so far don’t go into the exam rooms with them.  The doctor took me to his office to show me his, and show me the part of it that is already live: prescriptions.  From now on, no paper prescriptions.  He put in a vitamin prescription for Valerie and it went electronically to our local CVS, which is now in their system as the pharmacy we use.  If one of my prescriptions expires, I no longer call them.  I call CVS.  CVS pings the doctor’s system for the renewal.  It’s a cool system, though I am not entirely comfortable with the idea of having a prescription go right to the pharmacy when I might hold the paper one a few days until I can actually afford to fill it.  Oh well.

Posted by on 05/30 at 06:52 AM

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