"You're just Mommy."

Ever since our fateful trip to the ophthalmologist a couple of months ago, J has been obsessed with going to the eye doctor. You would think with all the trauma of that episode that he would be obsessed with avoiding the eye doctor, but not my little guy. Every time he gets a boo-boo, no matter how miniscule, he holds out the wound for me to see and solemnly tells me, "I hafta go to the eye doctor. I got a boo-boo." It's only intensified since our little bout with pinkeye the week before last. TH took him to urgent care because the pediatrician couldn't fit us in, and although he saw a doctor who was definitely not a pediatrician ("How about his ears?" he asked TH. "Does he have an ear infection?" ummm....you tell me, doctor.), because he looked at J's eyes it's now cemented in his mind that all sickness leads to the eye doctor.

The urgent care guy (I mean, doctor) prescribed antibiotic drops that we had to put in both eyes three times daily. Every 8 hours. Doesn't sound bad, right? Just tell him to tilt his head back, hold his lids open, and gently put 2 drops in each eye. Simple enough. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oh, if you could have witnessed the scene at my house when we were putting those drops in J's eyes. We laid on top of him. We bear-hugged him. We tried Laura's trick of trapping him between our legs on the floor. We tried to shoot the drops at his eyes from a couple of feet away. We--dear God, I feel guilty even writing this--put him in a headlock. Let's just say, over 2 days an entire bottle of antibiotic drops was wasted on the carpet and our clothes, and J got maybe 3 total doses before we gave up and just let the pinkeye "self-resolve." Now I understand the evil death-ray stare I get from people who I've instructed to administer eye drops to their cat 3 times a day and when they come back for the recheck a week later I lecture them about "always giving the meds as directed!" If you've ever had to medicate a cat with anything 3 times a day for more than a couple of days and you managed to give all the meds and not lose your fingers in the process...then I should probably hire you LOL.

So on the 3rd day, when I was trying to reassess J's eyes and see if he looked ok to go to daycare, he wouldn't let me look and kept telling me, "No! I hafta go to the eye doctor! And get medicine for my eyes!!" I tried to convince him that I'm qualified to look at eyes: "J, guess what? Mommy is a doctor. I can look at your eyes!" This was greeted with as skeptical a look as a 2.5 year-old can muster up. "Well, I'm an animal doctor, but still, I'm a doctor," I added lamely. "Mommy," J said, in an aren't-you-cute voice, "you not a doctor. You just Mommy. I hafta go to the eye doctor." I guess I need to work on my bedside manner.