Ouch!

Well, today was the little man's 4 month check up. The vital stats: 14 pounds (50th percentile), 25.5 inches (75th percentile), 42.5 cm head circumfrence (50th percentile), cuteness - exceptional (this is a professional medical opinion). Benito was on his very best behavior and doing everything he could to charm the pants off Dr. Brown. Metaphorically speaking. Which made it all the more sadistic to poke him in the leg 4 times. But we'll get to that, first the good stuff. He was so happy and chatty and fun, the doctor was totally enamored with him. She asked how we were doing with tummy time, could he hold his head up, and I said yeah, pretty well. She wanted the demo, so I put him on his tummy on the doctor table thing, and he immediately rolled over. I mean, split second. I have never seen him do it so fast. And we were all (my mom was there, as chauffeur/nanny/governess) kind of surprised and laughed, so the doctor picked him up and put him back on his tummy. Same thing. He wasn't on his tummy a nano second before he turned back over. He was totally showing off for her. She was appropriately impressed and made all kinds of nice noises about being super athletic, and how we would probably get to spend his college fund visiting him in Rome on his year abroad, because he would most likely get a full ride. She commented several times about how cute his little voice is, and what great sounds he is making. Lets see, what else... We are allowed to try to skip the middle of the night feeding, and see if he will go back to sleep when he wakes up in the night. Its only 2 months away from solid food - rice cereal here we come! Teeth are apparently just around the corner as well. It all seems to be going alarmingly fast. She felt my weird eye bump and said it was on my eyelid, most likely a clogged duct. I was sure it was eye cancer and would require immediate eye removal surgery, so that was a relief. So that was all well and good, and she said make an appointment to come back in 2 months, which I am just now realizing I didn't do, and waltzed out of there, all happy like, before the carnage began. Then Leilani the nurse comes in, and I feel like the Darth Vader theme song should always accompany her entrance. (She is actually very nice.) I explained very patiently to the boy that we don't want him to get Polio or Diptheria or Pertussis, they are all very nasty diseases, and that I have no idea what Pneumococcal disease or Haemophilus influenza type B is, but that I'm pretty sure he didn't want to get those either. He just drooled at me and let me know he was getting hungry, so it seems like he didn't listen at all. Most likely this is just the beginning of many years of being ignored that I have in store. Anyway, she lines up the 4 shots, and 4 bandaids, and he still had no idea what was coming. I let him chew on my finger, but the second that first needle went into his chubby little thigh, he started wailing. Its not so much the noise that bothers me, but those little tiny baby tears are just a killer. Tragically sad. As soon as she was done I tried to feed him, and he was trying to cry and eat simultaneously, which was so pitiful. Fortunately he did calm down pretty quickly and ate some and then zonked out. The rest of the day was apparently quite sleepy, and he has been asleep since I got home at 6:30 until almost 10, waking up only briefly to eat a couple of times, which I'm pretty sure he did mostly in his sleep. So its been kind of a big traumatic day for the little guy. On the bright side, it turns out there is a government fund to help pay for care if he has a serious vaccine reaction. I found that to be super comforting information. Sheesh.