The CUTEST little blind girl

Monday afternoon, Jenny and I ventured off to the eye doctor to pick up her new glasses. In my mind, I saw my little girl so appreciative of her new ability of see that she would gladly and constantly want to wear her new glasses. As nearly all things in my mind, it didn't go that way.

When we left the doctor's building, Jenny hands me the glasses and proceeds to inform me that she doesn't like her glasses; she doesn't want to wear them. I begin the plea-bargain.

1. "Jenny don't you want to be able to see all the neat things this world has to show you?" - Nope.
2. "Jenny, these glasses are very special and made just for you. Don't you want to wear them?" - Nope.
3. "We'll go get McDonald's and then go out to the airport if you wear your new glasses" -  Okay.

While I realize that bribery is not the best thing to teach my child, at this point I'm desperate. The glasses were expensive and I really don't care if she doesn't want to wear them, she's going to wear them!

Once they were on her face, it took her another two hours to get tired of them. I think part of her was overwhelmed by what she could now see. As we were watching the airplanes and the birds and the people at the airport overlook, Jenny was most amazed by the ground. I guess I never realized how little of the ground details she could see.



Jenny's first ride on the train
where she could actually see everything.

Next day, I put on my own glasses and (because the weather was beautiful) we headed to the zoo.

This was the first time Jenny had ever really
seen the polar bear underwater.

An AMAZING experience for a kid who has never really seen an elephant before, or the eagle, or the owl (no wonder she freaked out when the darn thing approached the glass the last time).



Jenny scolded this peacock for walking among the flowers.

Despite the crowd and the day cares and the church Bible camps who also took advantage of the beautiful weather, we had a really great day. My curious little girl had never before asked me so many questions about so many things. "What's that, Mom?" became her all-too-familiar phrase for the day.

It is truly amazing to see things through the eyes of this child. The wonder and the newness were incredibly humbling. Every now and again, I looked over my glasses at the exhibits and the animals and the people we were seeing and wondering how this little girl ever decided to love this place. (My eyesight is only slightly better than Jenny's). Some of the animals - the ones we saw up close, like the Bonobos (monkeys) and the insects - I could see fairly well. But the macaques and the gorillas, the manatees and the seals, the wolves and her beloved eagle . . . Without my glasses, I could barely make out their shapes, let alone the details.

I am both proud and in awe of my daughter's coping skills to this point. How in the world did she not fall down every five seconds? How did she manage to find her way in crowds of people? How could she possibly manage to do something as simple as watch an episode of SuperWhy and not wonder what they were talking about half the time?

Today, Jenny's third day with her glasses, she has accepted that she can see much better with them. There has been very little bribery today to get her to wear them. Soon I'll be able to go back to wearing my contacts again, I hope. I thank all of you who have seen Jenny with her glasses and have told her how beautiful she looks with them on. It's made a world of difference and I can only hope that Jenny will continue to know just how beautiful she is, both inside and out, with or without her glasses.

My Little Blind Girl

They say you should always be careful what you wish for because you might just get it. Well...I sheepishly reflect on the hopes and wishes I'd make for Jenny when I was pregnant with her, now because at least one of these is coming true.

When I was pregnant and knew we were having a girl, Tim and I talked about the type of child we didn't want her to become - one of those beautiful but self-centered little snobs that treated dorks like us with contempt and disdain. In all honestly, we wished for Jenny to be like us - dorks. While she would have to deal with the heartache of bullies and immature people, she would build a strength and a resilience that those "popular" kids just couldn't possibly have. Plus, no one dates dorks and therefore I wouldn't have to worry about teen pregnancy or drinking because she would be a dork. So we decided she would learn to play the tuba (Tim nixed that and said she should learn to play the drums, at least. Tom-boy was better than utter dork-hood), and she would be put into golf lessons, not dance and NEVER set foot outside the house in a cheerleading uniform unless it was Halloween.

In truth, I just didn't think I could handle having a popular child.

Jenny is beautiful and has the most gorgeous blue eyes I've seen in a long while. We're talking "Martina McBride" eyes. She has Tim's long eye lashes and a captivating smile. I knew we were doomed to have a popular child.

And while I lamented it, I learned to get used to it. Therapy and depression meds are expensive these days, so maybe my little girl would turn out like one of those well-balanced kids you hear about or read about. Maybe.

Then we got a comment from Jenny's preschool teacher that she was creepin' on her drawings at school. We started to notice how often we told Jenny to back away from the TV because "you're gonna burn your eyes out." After a short test from her pediatrician, we found out that Jenny was near-sighted. We confirmed it through Children's Hospital (a freak of scheduling made it possible for us to be seen before August) and ordered her glasses just today.

I'm sad because my little girl will be one of "those kids" who's had glasses since they were three. I'm sad because I wanted my little girl to have so few struggles with life that she could be happy. I'm sad because my little girl is now going to be a dork.

But I'm thankful, too. I'm thankful that she didn't inherit ALL of Tim's eye issues. I'm thankful that she will finally be able to see all the beauty of the world (especially the zoo, can't wait for that). And I'm thankful that I have her - dorkiness and all because of all that it took to get her here.

For now, I'm able to look forward to her glasses, which should be in, in about a week because they look totally cute on her. They are pink, a thin pink and they just make her face look so totally cute. She looks more intelligent and more precocious in them and I just love the way my little girl looks in them.

Oh and she's only a little more blind than I am - thank God.

So I suppose we should always be careful when we wish. My favorite musical has something about that and I'll close with a few lines so it'll get stuck in my head for the next few hours.

Careful the wish you make . . . wishes are children. Careful the path they take  . . . wishes comes true, not free . . .