CTE: Aaron receives jabs from Sister Penny

Aaron at 4 months

    Seems like a strange title for a blog post, but it briefly illustrates the strange language they speak over here in South Africa.  Aaron went for his 4 mo. vaccinations on Thursday, even though he is 6 days away from being 5 months old.  (We're a little slow)  Anyway, we went to the paediatrician's (actual spelling) office and met with Sister Penny (recommended by a friend).  And, of course, my first reaction was: Why are we meeting a nun at the doctor's office?  But, I did not ask that right away.  She took us into her office and wanted to see Aaron's records and started talking about the differences between the US and SA vaccination schedules, seeming very professional.  At the appropriate time, I had to ask what the title Sister meant.  Penny just looked at me a little bewildered, so I asked what she would be called in America.  Her response was that sister is a British term for nurse, stemming from their history where a large number of nurse were actually nuns.

    After that was cleared up it was time for the jabs, which is another word for shots.  They still use terms like vaccinations or immunizations here in SA, but the colloquial term is jabs instead of shots.  Not sure which sounds worse.  Anyway, Aaron did great, took his jabs like a champ, with some minimal crying and was ready to go again.
    The last order of business was Aaron's measurements.  Sister Penny weighed and measured Aaron.  His official 4 mo. plus 24 day measurements were: 7.28 kg and 65 cm.  Pretty amazing, huh!  For those of you who are not a metric-savvy as Diana and I (which means we have a handy iPod conversion tool), the American measurements are: 17 lbs, 4 oz. and 25 5/8 inches.  Unfortunately, they do not do percentage sizes here, but to put that into perspective, Aaron has grown about 3 inches and more than 3 lbs in the last 2 months.  Good work, son!