Bones!

Last week, Rudy saw her pediatric orthopedist, and it turns out that the phosphorus and vitamin D she takes daily (to replenish the calcium her kidneys just aren't holding on to) are working. She's growing taller and her leg bones are slightly straighter. We saw this in the x-rays she's posing for here.

And here are some of the other things that happened at this particular doctor's appointment. To begin, Rudy did a fantastic job waiting patiently in one room for the x-ray and then in another room for the doctor. We kept busy playing I spy with pictures on the wall, munching on the limited release basketball goldfish crackers (at 9 a.m., but whatever), and treating Lambie as a patient with purple latex doctor gloves ["dockta gubs"] Rudy wore while wriggling her tiny fingers against the crinkly paper on the examining table. She even consented to removing her extra-pouffy tutu for the x-ray. But when the first doctor came in to see her, a resident who was the warm-up act, all it took was one attempted look at Rudy on the table for her to screech and wriggle and thrash around demonically.

"Rudy's two," I said, by way of explanation.

"Oh, I understand," the handsome doctor replied. "I've got a two-year-old at home."

That sort of thing always makes me feel better. And then he tried to observe Rudy's gait by sending her out into the hall to run or walk around. Of course, she only wanted to slump on the floor and overturn her bag of goldfish crackers in a heap. And while she was whining, another examination room's door opened and Rudy's pediatric endocrinologist stuck her head out.

"Hey, Rudy!" she called. "I thought I heard you out here!"

Eventually, the orthopedist came in, and when he heard that his colleague was just down the hall, he went to go grab her and we had an impromptu team meeting around a computer screen, looking at x-rays of Rudy's legs from that morning and comparing them to the x-rays from last fall. It was a happy little moment, noting the modest success of routine treatment, and after some bubble blowing meant to distract from blood drawing, we were out of there.

And also, there was this. Every time Rudy tromped down a hallway or into an elevator, I noticed another adult with the same reaction: a smile, a shake of the head, and usually, a soft laugh. Rudy Toot is a little beam of sunshine. Partly because she's singing and talking to herself, and partly because of her ensemble: the tutu, the rainbow headband and clip-on hot pink braid, the striped leg warmers and sparkle shoes, and on that day, her new favorite shirt, the glittery Celtics shirt from Old Navy.

As we were leaving, we got into a elevator crowded with about four or five adults, all of whom were speaking Spanish. One man near the front took one look at Rudy, and the smile, the head shake, and the laugh predictably followed. It turns out that Rudy is cross-cultural, and her cheerfulness is multi-lingual. That's the epiphany I had anyhow. A cute little crazy kid can make just about anybody, anywhere, smile.