I should have known better...

~
I had two doctor's appointments today - one OB and one diabetes. My daughter was going to be at school and I had made arrangements with a friend to watch my son. For the past week, I had been blissfully imagining what a kid free 3 hours, in the middle of the day no less, would look like. Sure, I would be at the doctors, but who cares? I wouldn't have my kids with me. I envisioned getting Starbucks and sipping coffee and reading my Kindle while in the waiting room - it was going to be heavenly. (On another note, how pathetic is it that going to the doctor kid free is my idea of bliss?)

I should have known better. I should have known that simply dreaming about how wonderful this would be would mean that it would never happen.

My daughter had a cough yesterday and a fever last night. I couldn't send her to school. And since my children are petrie dishes, I was fairly certain my son would be sick in less than 24 hours. Which meant he couldn't go to his friend's.

And I couldn't reschedule the doctor's appointments.

They were great for the OB appointment. Sure, there was the instance when my son turned the lights off in the reception room when I wasn't looking, but for the most part they were really good. They sat on the couch and watch the Sesame Street videos I had fortuitously downloaded to my phone earlier that morning.

It was at the second doctor's appointment that things started to go downhill. See, the diabetes doctor shares his office with 6 other diabetes doctors and 2 nutritionists. And there are always a lot of old people in the room; maybe one other preggo woman. There are never any kids there.

Today, my kids changed all that.

After sitting so quietly at the OB's office, my son decided he didn't want to sit quietly anymore. He wanted to climb over the chairs. And the tables. He even tried to crawl into a potted plant. Then he leaned over a chair, practically crawled into an elderly woman's lap, and said, "HELLO! Book?" I'm guessing he wanted a story.

My daughter was whiny. She wanted to go home. She wanted to read. She wanted to watch Jake and the Neverland Pirates. She wanted Daddy. She wanted McDonalds. She didn't want to be here.

So I was pulling out all of my mom tricks - videos, books, toys, snacks, games - and nothing was working. The old people were staring at me. Judging. Whispering. There were no smiles of indulgence, no quick looks shot my way to say, "It's okay, I've been there."

As an elderly woman was leaving, she stopped to speak to me. "You know," she said, using that tone. (You know the tone - the one that old woman reserve for young mothers? The condescending, if these were my children, I would beat them tone? The you-obviously-have-no -idea-what-you-are-doing tone?) "You shouldn't bring your children to doctor's offices. There are germs here. They might get sick."

I forced a smile. I should have murmured a polite thank you and ignored her. Instead, I said, "That's okay, they are all ready sick."

At that moment, my son sneezed in her face.