Worth Their Weight

I killed three incredibly long hours yesterday morning at a Westcliff blood lab for a gestational diabetes test, having failed the one-hour test, and now I look like some kind of druggie. The crooks of my arms are bluish with tiny red puncture marks, having been pricked five times in three hours. Can I just say, Ouch?

My parents are gone, and normally I would have called upon them to watch the kids for this sort of marathonic event, but of course, as many of you already know, they are in Europe. So I called upon my sweet 90-year-old grandma to come assist with the insanity, to at least keep an ever-present eye upon my two wiggly buggers while I pop in and out of each blood-sucking session. With Great Grandma in my back pocket, I came prepared for the long haul. In tow were two large toy/book bags, a diaper bag, two kid water bottles and baggies of cheerios, a portable DVD player, and my purse. I think back to a day when I would have brought my purse. That’s it. Wow, how things have changed. On the way out, we added two jackets to the must-haul list; you know how the weather warms up by midday in the fall, at least in SoCal. There wasn’t a whole lot I could saddle on my four-year-old either; most of it weighed more than 30 pounds. But we managed…somehow.

During the blood-drawing episodes, the second time I heaved my rotund belly into the little white chair, the one with the funny crossbar – like, “What, you’re afraid I’m going to book it outa here when you pull out that needle for the fifth time?” – for a fleeting moment, I asked myself, “Is all this trouble really worth adding another one of these little buggers to the family?” Then Esther popped her delectably chubby cheeks and bouncing round eyes around the door of the room and said in her flirtatiously bubbly two-year-old voice, “Hi, Mum! What'cha doing?” and all of my momentary skepticism disappeared.

These two adorably quirky buggers, saddle attire and all, are worth their weight in blood! :)

[Oh, and the test came out normal...praise God!]