A Lie By Omission

I have been keeping a dirty secret from the boys for the past week or so. I kept telling myself that if Ben specifically asked me "hey mom, are we going to the doctor for our flu shot?" then of course I would truthfully answer him, "yes, honey, we are as a matter of fact on Wednesday after school." But instead I kept my mouth shut in order to keep the drama level down and the tears to a minimum. Ben hates shots. I am sure there is not a child on earth who likes shots but Ben H.A.T.E.S. shots. I sweat he cries more than all the newborns on the planet combined when a needle approaches him. I hate inflicting pain on him just slightly more than I hate the theatrics that accompany a trip to the doctor when a shot is eminent thus, my lips were sealed. I picked the boys up from school and we made our way toward the doctor. Ben asked where we were headed and I said "oh we just have an errand to run andthenmaybewecangopickoutyourhalloweencostumesandhaveanearlydinneratchickfila?!" I was desparate to salvage the afternoon/evening. The boys were full of smiles and stories from school and Joey even randomly said "I love you mommy" as I was driving along. I felt about an inch tall. We pulled up to the doctor's office and the boys were still clueless. It wasn't until we went into the exam room that Ben got wide eyed and asked me why we were there. I calmly said "Buddy we are here to get your and Joe's flu shots." dramatic pause. "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. NOOOOOOOOOOOO. NOOOOOOOOO. NOOOOOOOO." I asked Ben to get it together because Joey was watching him and he quietly sobbed with tears running down his cheeks and shoulder shaking as the nurse went to retrieve the shots. Joey bravely volunteered to go first and though he cried, his tears were quickly dried and he was mostly annoyed by the bandaid. Once it was removed Joe was fine and went back to playing. And then there was Ben. I had to drag him out of his chair, carry him to the table and hold him to my body with all my strength in order for the nurse to administer the shot. And that was when she told me that they would have to come back next month for boosters since we opted out of the H1N1 shots last year. Oh joy. All in all the trip wasn't a great one but it wasn't too bad either and we all survived. Ben complained on and off all night that his arm hurt and each time Joey said "it didn't hurt so bad, bubby!" We actually had a great rest of the afternoon with a semi-succesful trip to Halloween City where after careful deliberation a SWAT team costume was chosen by Ben and Joey was a partypooper, insisting he doesn't want to dress up for Halloween. "No thank you" he kept saying everytime I tried to show him a costume he might like. He did think it would be a great idea, however, for me to dress up like Brobee from Yo Gabba Gabba. We had an early dinner at ChickFilA, where even the closed for repair play place didn't dampen our spirits as we laughed over nuggets and ice cream cones. We came home to color masterpieces while watching The Princess and The Frog. All that was missing was Dean who was at the 2nd Pacers preseason game. When Joey found out Dean had a game he said "Daddy has a Pacers game A-Gain?" Hold on Joe, there are only 45 some odd games to go.