Shot Day.

I hate getting shots.  I hate giving shots.  You would think in a day and age where we have hybrid cars, ipods, and even crustables (imagine explaining to the pioneers that we have packaged sandwiches with the crust removed in a cute circle shape for lunch) that we could come up with a better way to have life saving vaccines other than shooting them into our bodies by puncturing the skin with an instrument used to make quilts and for drug users.  I have never hated shots more than I did on Thursday when I had to take Liv to a doctor I had never met to get her 2 month immunizations.  After we sat in the pediatric waiting room with ugly 80's wallpaper and germ slimed walls we were led back to a room and I couldn't help feel guilty knowing that out of the 2 of us, I was the only one who knew what was going to happen and had the capacity to escape:

The door to freedom, the only way to escape....

While we waited I did a photo shoot of Liverpool (that's what G calls her) after they weighed and measured her and found out she is 14.6 lbs and 25 inches long.

Then the Doctor walked in.  I felt like I was meeting the cousin of the guy from Aladdin who is selling things at the beginning of the movie.  This was not the Arabian Nights Clinic but somehow Liv sensed something was going to happen because the second Dr.Safder walked in the room she busted out her best screeching tears and there wasn't even a shot needle in sight....yet.

 

We finally calmed her down and then a buxom woman in pepto bismal pink scrubs walked in with three shot needles and I wanted to punch her in the double chin because all of a sudden I felt very protective of my friend Liv. However, I restrained myself and realized this was a milestone not only for Liv, but for my motherhood.  As a mother there are plenty of times when I know that in order for Liv to grow and learn, she has to have experiences that bring pain, that are not fun and sometimes make you cry...hard.  I remembered a story my dad told me about when I was in nursery.  He said that he had brought me to to nursery and was watching me and a little boy came and pushed me down, well since I was his first and only birthright daughter at the time, his fathering reflexes kicked in and and walked right over and pushed that boy back.  Obviously this is not correct behavior but I understand why he did that.  Some of the most important events and lessons in my life have been learned by my own painful vaccine like experience that my mom could not rescue me from because I needed them. 

She could not rig the 10th grade student body election to help me win, she did not fly down to Ecuador and pick me up from my mission when I felt so alone except for a companion I couldn't understand and smelled really weird.  She did not keep me in a baby bjorn and never let me walk or date or get my heart broken, she had to let me learn.  Being in Bluefield is a good life vaccine right now.  I'm so grateful for my own mother and my own life vaccines that I need.