Poor little pin-cushion Lexi

     With our move overseas looming ever closer, Lexi had to go in for a blood draw and a small injection, which will have to be examined for a reaction in two days. She was a little crabby when I picked her up from daycare, so I was fearing the worse when I thought about needles going in her arms.
     Just imagine a twenty-month-old holding still while a stranger ties a rubber band around her arm, takes forever cleaning and drying the target area, and sticks a needle into her arm, not once, but twice probing for blood. Now imagine getting the same toddler to sit still so the stranger can have a go at the other arm, because she failed to draw a single drop of blood out of the first tiny arm. Lexi was such a trooper. She never flinched. She never cried. I know it was uncomfortable, because she did whine momentarily, but she didn't spill a single tear. She just held her arm out straight and watched everything as it happened. When the blood began to flow down the little tubing into the vial, I cheered Lexi on for being such a good producer--as if she could control the flow.
     Now armed with two Shreck band-aids and the promise of stickers, and probably thinking she had had enough of this stuff, Lexi had to face her third needle. Yet Lexi still did not cry, at least not like I would have expected her to. She sort of protested in a wail that lasted all of one or two seconds, and that was it. She let the nurse draw a cirle around the injection site and then she begged me to pick her up. We walked out of there proudly and chose a bright blue sucker for the ride home. When we got home, the band-aids and the circle were all that she talked about. I couldn't understand a word she was saying, other than "boo boo", but all the pointing she did made things quite clear.