Hindsight?

So. Kirk needs glasses.

This morning I took Kirk in to the eye doctor. Doc had suggested that we go have him checked out, oh, about a year ago and it finally happened. He was such a good boy. He was really kind of freaked out about it but brought with his little felt kitty puppet he made at daycare a while back because it was loosing its eye and needed to see the eye doctor, too. The nurse ran him through a bunch of tests. Instead of a regular chart he got to identify pictures of things like a hand, a bird, a tractor, and a cake. He was having fun and she was absolutely awesome with him. Then came the “magic raindrops”. He did not like those. I didn’t realize they were going to dilate his pupils so the entire appointment took about three times longer than I was mentally prepared for.

After playing in the lobby for a half hour we went back in. Kirk was complaining about how his eyes were “weird” and I assured him they would go back to normal. I’ve only had my eyes dilated once but yeah, it was weird all right. It’s sort of funny to see a kid with giant acid-trip pupils! The nurse checked out his eyes with a series of lenses and then eventually the doctor himself came in. Kirk was fabulous. He was so calm and well behaved while the doctor used all his lights and lenses and various other doodads and “doctor tools”. I was unbelievably proud of my son.

And then I got the verdict: he’s farsighted. He’s got a common little kid thing called strabismus that usually develops around age 2 or 3 and doesn’t necessarily have to be genetic. In fact, one of the factors is low birth weight. Well, he certainly had that. The doctor didn’t think that the plagiocephaly, or flattened skull, had anything to do with its development. The problem is, if the glasses don’t help to strengthen his weaker right eye, then he’ll have to have an eye patch. Great. But at least now we know. It explains why the one eye sometimes seemed to be turned inward, but not always.



Tonight we’re going to get Kirk’s glasses prescription filled. This is all brand new territory for both Mr. b and I. Neither of us have ever had anything other than perfect vision. But we’ll become experts fast enough since it sounds more likely that Kirk will need lenses for life, rather than eventually grow out of it. It could happen but it would be years from now. So we’re going to make sure he knows how special he is. Good thing he’s already a big Doctor Who fan – he’s going to get his very own brainy specs! I’m sure we’ll see kids in cartoons wearing glasses everywhere once he’s got them but at the moment only Clark Kent is coming to mind. Mr. b asked Kirk’s godfather to come by wearing his own glasses and taunt us for not being cool enough to get to wear them. I also suggested we let Kirk pick out someplace for us to go to dinner tonight to celebrate picking out his new frames. I’m assuming that’ll mean either the Taco Rice Restaurant or the Spaghetti Restaurant. (Which is a win for Preggo Mommy as well!) And then we’ll have a new thing to fight about when we have to make sure that he actually does wear the suckers every day, all day. Because in two months we have to go back and have a muscle check. Hopefully we won’t also need to pick out pirate role models to convince him that patches are the coolest.