Here she is!

Maddie's glasses came in today.  She's still getting used to them and I honestly can't tell if they've made a difference.  We're just going to pretend like the do.  :)

So here she is before:

And after:

She's now officially part of the glasses club!

And the patch club!

Random funny things

This was our conversation over breakfast this morning:

Me (trying to instill a little bit of confidence):  You know that you guys are important?  And you can do anything you want to do?

Parks:  Yeah.  Because George Washington won that war and we are free.

Me: Um, yeah, I guess.  So you can do anything you want to do.  If you want to be an astronaut, you can be one.  If you want to be a teacher you can be one.

Maddie:  Yeah I want to be a school bus driver.

Me:  Awesome.

---------------------------------------
A conversation with Maddie over homework.  I was trying to help her with her vocabulary words.

Me:  Maddie, what does "active" mean?

Maddie:  It's like when you're in a play, like, "LAAAAAAAA!" (using her best opera voice)

----------------------------------------
On Sunday I brought up a box of Chex from the pantry and Maddie announced that we were going to make a treat.

Parks:  Oh, oh.  I love those things.  What are they called?  Those brown things.  Oh yeah!  Muddy Friends!

I think from now on Muddy Buddies will now be immortalized at our house as Muddy Friends!

Do you see what I see?

So, here's the short story:  Maddie has HORRIBLE eyesight and has to get glasses.  They should be done any minute.  Apparently the lab had to restart her lenses because they didn't pass inspection the first time so it's taking longer than expected.  So we're still waiting, but not so patiently.   Here's the long story...

This all started at the beginning of November when the elementary school held vision screenings.  I was actually there helping all the kids get screened when Maddie got her eyes checked.  It was one of those crazy E charts, where the kids are supposed to turn their hand in the direction of the E,  like this:

She couldn't seem to make her hand go the right way.  I thought she just didn't understand what was going on, but in reality, she just couldn't see.  I was glad there was an actual nurse there to work with her and follow through.  If not, I probably would have just insisted she could see fine and that we didn't need to do anything.  But the nurse persisted and ended up giving me a referral form for her to see an optometrist.

It took several weeks for the optometrist to be able to see her.  Again, we waited patiently.  :)  The appointment went well.  Maddie really seemed to be OK with everything and the doctor was so good with her.  She had the full eye exam and he had a hard time believing she was functioning as well as she was.  He let me look through some lenses to show me how Maddie is most likely seeing the world.  I was astounded.  There was one little sliver of the lenses that I could see through.  Everything else was blurry and distorted.

So it turns out Maddie is farsighted, also known as hyperopia.  This is how she would most likely see the world if her farsightedness wasn't so severe:

Which I guess wouldn't be so bad, but she also has an astigmatism.  Which blurs everything- near and far.  Kind of like this:

She also has amblyopia, meaning one of her eyes is lazy, or weaker than the other. 

So with the combination of all those things, she really can't see!  Which leads me to wonder how the heck she's been able to function throughout her life. Every year at her physical her eyes are always tested, but the more I thought about it, I realized that she will never tell the nurse the symbols or letters on the eye chart.  I thought she was just being stubborn (which she is prone to be), but in reality I'm sure it's because she couldn't see!  I honestly had NO CLUE she was struggling with anything.  She reads, she writes, she dances, and hardly ever runs into walls.  :)  She is just such a fighter she must have been finding a way to make do with what she could see.

Anyway, I don't really know what all the technical details are, but I do know that the doctor said she's currently seeing 20/200 with her right eye, and 20/60 with her left.  By definition, being blind is anything 20/200 or worse.  Needless to say, she needs glasses!  The doctor said after she gets her glasses, her vision should improve to 20/60 in her right eye, and 20/30 in her left.

We'll also have to patch her left eye for a couple of hours every day to make the right/weaker eye work harder.  We're still working on getting an awesome patch put together, but it will probably end up looking something like this with a little bit of Hello Kitty flair- by her request:

There is a great tutorial here on how to make these patches.

So that's the news on Maddie.  We sure love that girl. I'm so glad her school did vision screenings, or we may have never discovered this.  Also, I can't wait until she gets her glasses and is able to actually see!   I'll post a picture when they finally come in!

Parenting Fail

Today the kids got out of school early.  Random for a Monday.  It had something to do with a bus furlough.  Anyway, since they get out early today, apparently that also meant Maddie was supposed to arrive early for Kindergarten as well.  Although no one told me anything about it.  She arrived 30 minutes late, or ON TIME according to the normal Monday schedule.  Parent fail.

Oh and also, Maddie didn't make it to her totally awesome soccer game on Saturday because # 1)  it was Conference weekend, and # 2) she wasn't feeling well.  It wasn't until this morning (Monday), well past the time of said game, that I realized she was supposed to bring treats.  Parent fail.

Sigh.  Can someone get me a new brain because I seem to have misplaced mine.

One down, only 19 more to go

7 years and 6 months old, and Parks finally lost his first tooth! He seems to have held on to his teeth longer than most of his classmates, so I'm sure he's glad to join their toothless ranks.

His only dilemma was whether or not to admire his slightly bloodied tooth for a day or to leave it under his pillow. I heard a lot of bumping around going on in his room last night, so either the tooth fairy is very clumsy, or he's just too excited to sleep.  Good thing it came out when it did because its replacement is already coming in behind it!

School

Hooray for school!  Hopefully that means an end to the non-stop fighting we've been having around here lately.  Maddie started Kindergarten and Parks moved on up to 2nd grade.  Two days down and all is going well (except for the part where Parks has to walk his little sister home from school....we're still working on that).  :)

Quote of the day

From Maddie: "Hey Mom, wanna watch me pump myself?"

WHAAA?

Apparently it's in reference to this lovely Kid History video at 3:48.  My kids could watch these for hours:





And here's their version: