Hmph.

Owen and I made our fifth (yes, I said fifth, that was not a typo) trip to his pediatrician's office yesterday just since his first (yes, I said first) appointment with this new Dr. in July. He has had some nasty ear infections, and this one is just as mean spirited as the last two. He's starting his third round of antibiotics (this is fun with numbers, huh?) since we moved here, and I am not happy about it.

I asked the Dr. in my most level, careful-not-to-sound-hysterical voice, if giving him antibiotics again was the best plan, since he's been on them so much lately. He said it's better to treat an ear infection than to give it a chance to get really comfortable and take up permanent residence, and I could understand that. But then I made the mistake of saying something like, "I wonder why he keeps getting these now, he's never had one before we moved here." And he of course asked if Owen has been in daycare situations (yes, at the YMCA when I work out) or playing with kids (yes, the Fillmores) and then he tells me, "Well he's around kids more, he is out more now. For the first year you kept him in, didn't take him out much or expose him to much, and so now he's not living in a bubble and he's going to catch everything. It's normal for kids to get a lot of ear infections until about 2 years old, and he's just started getting them late because of late exposure."

Wait a second there, genius. Hold the phone. Are you assuming I am one of THOSE parents?

It was all I could do to just nod and smile and then promptly re-clothe my child and walk to the car. What I really wanted to say was something about how I get teased all the time by my best friend, Owen's beloved Aunt Pandy, because I let him walk around barefoot in Wal-Mart and ride naked in shopping carts and put his own shoes in his mouth. I wanted to tell him how when Owen was 6 weeks old we took him on an Amtrak train (not notorious for its sanitary conditions) all the way from Charlotte to Albany, NY and that I nursed and changed him on the floor of Penn Station in New York (also not exactly the most sparkling facility). I wanted to write him a list of the hordes of people my child has hugged, drooled on, and been kissed by since he was born, including the 120 people he shared breathing space with at the Chris and Rachel's wedding in Vermont, and give him a calendar of all the times I took him out with me, including the first time we took him out when he was seven days old and we walked around King Street in Boone and had lunch at Our Daily Bread.

Do not tell ME I spent a year of my child's life keeping him in a BUBBLE.

Anyway, I was offended by it, but then I realized, smirking in the parking lot, that although my child spent his first year out and about in the world, it was a less smoggy world in the mountains with fresh air, and he didn't start getting all this crap until he moved to the yucky city, so he can take his judgment and shove up his polluted...well, you know...