Okay, no pox on the house of Reid. In fact, Reid doesn't have the pox, but his parents have the paranoia.

We got the doctor today, and we went in through the back door like some kind of pariah patient. Hanging out among the archived patient files and spent fax machines from a bygone era, we waited nervously for a final diagnosis.

"That's not chicken pox."

Oh. Okay. We'll just be going then.

The nice thing is we got the chicken pox vaccine as part of the bargain. Dr. Nancy gave Reid a quick look over, and then sat back down. Dr. Nancy is about to become a mom for the third time, and Reid could very well be the last patient she sees before she heads to her maternity leave.

It turns out that, with no fever, no little red dots in his mouth or on his chest, no gross little blisters on the little red dots and not much else to talk about, Reid has a minor cold and some little red dots. That's it.

On the upside, though, since we had packed out for a trip to the doctor and found such pleasant news at the other side, we decided to get Reid some fancy new kicks. Certain to impress his grandpa (at least until Nike makes shoes with the Natural Motion support system for new walkers), we settled on the Stride Rite Baby Runaround.

Quite a day for a little fellow who thought he had chicken pox this morning by ten.