Dermatologists are strange creatures. Being a nurse, I’ve run into a whole slew of doctors, and I have to say, dermatologists are the strangest of the lot.

Let me back up for a second: back in August, at Ben’s 6 year old checkup my non-alarmist ped (which I love, love, love, especially since he is our GP. He’s an old military doctor, very no nonsense and I adore him) noticed a mole on his back that he wanted someone else to take a look at. I felt pretty bad, mainly because I’m trained to notice this sort of stuff and I hadn’t. Probably because at 6, I don’t often examine Ben’s body sans clothes.

So I dutifully made the appointment for him, and yesterday I pulled him out of school to visit this dermatologist. And thus began the day that should have been good.

We waited for over an hour to see this guy only to have him quiz me incessiantly about the state of this mole, when it popped out, if there had been any changes in it, if it bothered Ben whatsoever. When I confessed that I had no idea about anything to do with it (to me it looks fine, and I never would have thought to have a specialist take a gander, but hey, I trust my GP/ped impeccibly). We were sent on our way, slightly creeped out by his strange manner (he spent a good time stroking Ben’s large head of hair, which was just strange and made me take a mental note to NEVER, EVER leave my child alone with this man) with an appointment for 3 months to check if it’s changed.

My error came on the way home when I decided to keep Ben home from school for the rest of the day. Visions of having two children home together playing sweetly danced in my head, which turned out to be just that: pipe dreams.

Alex was furious because he had to go poop and couldn’t seem to actually do it (damn you mushed bananas, you will never grace his palate again–I should have known better–the B in the BRAT diet does stand for bananas).

Ben was unhappy because he was tired and bored and wanted to play with his frrrrriiiiieeeennnndddsss, which meant his normally decent attention span was less than that of a mosquito and he was supremely whiny.

The whole day was like being pecked to death by two extremely cute chickens with the only highlight being when Ben decided to “play” with his brother while he was in his Exersaucer. Pretty much, all that Ben has to do is get down next to Alex’s face and make noise to make Alex belly laugh. It’s freaking adorable.

I was waiting for the sweet salvation of bedtime to relax and unwind for an hour or two. Har-dee-har-freaking-harr.

As Alex was finally falling asleep nearly an hour after his normal bedtime, Dave let the dog out…

Wait for it…

Wait for it…

Wait for it…

And the dog, in his infinate wisdom, decided that RIGHT NOW was the appropriate time to tangle with the neighborhood skunk yet again. Off to the garage with H2O2 and baking soda again.

Then we realized that the reason for the exorbitant electric bill was not due to turning the A/C temperature down at night, but was due to the fact that the unit is now starting to fail. Thankfully, it’s September in Chicago, and we should be able to live off box fans (I’m deluded, I’m aware).

After the dog had been sucessfully cleaned, the baby began to scream loudly. And continued to scream on and off every time that I started to fall asleep, until I finally gave up and just slept holding him all night long (which reminded me of those glorious newborn days).

It’s lucky that I long ago decided to take this parenting thing one day at a time.

(but how do people with 2+ kids manage? I wish I knew)