Flu Shots

Last week Julia came down with a bad cough and all of our girls had colds. It was wonderful. Snotty noses, lots of waking up at night. Good times. Our pediatrician strongly recommended that each of us receive the flu shot to help keep the virus out of our home, and therefore out of Julia's system. So, as a sign of solidarity, the Lindsay family dutifully showed up at our local Kaiser clinic to receive our doses of influenza. Now, I have always been very dubious of the efficacy of these flu shots. But, hey, if it benefits my daughters even a little bit, then I'll go ahead and do it.
To mitigate the horror of receiving shots, Annie and I have the tradition with the girls that we always go get some ice cream immediately following any such event. So, on Monday we told the girls that they would get a band-aid on their arms, but then we would have ICE CREAM! Yay!
We show up at Kaiser. The nurse calls us in and the twins go running into the exam room looking around for ice cream. "Yes, girls, we're going to have ICE CREAM! ... in just a minute," Annie and I say. After Julia's follow up appointment (she is pretty much all better by this point), the nurse then leads us to the next room. The girls once again charge into the room asking for ice cream. "Yes, girls, we're going to have ICE CREAM! ... almost," we say. My twins are bright cookies, so by this time they were beginning to doubt us.
Annie and I receive our doses first. Ours turns out to be the nasal spray. Man, that went against all of my instincts. Sucking up a living virus (yes, living) into my nose so I could be vaccinated against last year's influenza model?
Thankfully, the girls' shots went well (they are too young for the nasal spray). There was a bit of crying, but since we made such a big deal about how cool the band-aids were and how fun the ice cream was going to be, they began laughing.
We eventually made it to Rite-Aid where we partook of tasty Thrifty brand ice cream. More importantly, we restored their belief in our promises. It turned out to be a long lunch break for me. But when all was said and done, we all had a good time. We have learned that one of the keys to parenting is making a fun adventure of otherwise onerous tasks.