Perception

We picked Kirk up from daycare last night and told him we were going to go straight to the glasses store. He sincerely, and with a great deal of concern, asked, "Do I have to put poop in the potty to get my glasses?" He was overjoyed to learn that no, he does not have to put poop in the potty to get his glasses. Heh.



They had a great selection of cool kid frames at the one-hour place at the mall. Referencing a photo of David Tennant's Tenth Doctor, Kirk's only requirement was that they were black.



The biggest challenge is going to be getting Kirk to look through the glasses. He wears them down on his nose and looks over the top. We've been reminding him non-stop to push them up. I've been trying to explain that he needs to look through them in order to help his eyes see things close by. I honestly don't think he's seeing that much of a revelatory difference in his vision so far. It's not like he's in school and needing help focusing on his homework or reading assignments! Mr. b pointed out that he does look at books that we read to him and watch DVDs on the little portable player and paint pictures and that's all close to his face but it's not the same as focusing on schoolwork. I did notice tonight that he was rubbing his weaker eye so I just have to cross my fingers and hope that it's already being forced to work harder.

All this glasses talk has caused me to think through our immediate family members and catalogue who wears and glasses and when they got them. My brother was in elementary school, possibly fifth grade or so. I don't remember when my sister got hers but I think it was about the same time. They both have relatively weak prescriptions though. My mom's out of town so I haven't asked her but my vague memory is that she also was closer to junior high when she got her first specs. My dad didn't need anything until recently and that's just your standard age-related reading glasses. Mr. b's brother, like him, doesn't need corrective lenses. His aunt, however, started wearing them sometime in K-2 and has needed them ever since. She even apologized for her part in passing along bad genes! The smoking gun, so to speak, would seem to be her brother, my father-in-law. Mr. b's dad had a lazy eye when he was little and needed serious coke bottles. That's exactly what would happen to Kirk's slight cross eye if it went untreated! My FIL apparently stopped wearing them in high school at some point - he certainly didn't wear them in Nam - but started again in his late 30s and is now almost completely blind in one eye. I do wonder if it's the same eye that was lazy as a kid and if that lengthy hiatus from glasses had anything to do with it.

I think the hardest part for both Mr. b and I is the realization that Kirk is never going to look the same. When he first tried on his frames at the store we sort of had a collective heartbreaking moment, knowing that this is our son now. He's a glasses kid. It's momentous and a milestone and amazing. His sister will literally never know him looking any other way. He will always have had glasses in her memory. Sure, he won't wear them constantly and someday he'll likely demand contacts or laser surgery or whatever but by then we'll instead be used to him with glasses on his face. It's just going to take some adjustment time. It's a cognitive leap or something.