Eye Eye, Captain

I accompanied the kid to her first official eye exam yesterday. I took her to my optometrist. He told her, "You can call me John." What the bleep? I don't get to call him John!

I didn't have any particular concerns about A's eyes (her ears are a whole other matter - she gives the impression of being stone deaf most of the time). However, I wanted to take her in now to get a baseline for future eye exams. She had a lot of trepidation about the exam, so I plied her with a slice of cake beforehand. I truly did not want her to be nervous about it, though I have to confess that my pre-exam angst over the puff-of-air-in-the-eye test is enough to cause me to need therapy myself.

My daughter knows her letters quite well, but for younger kids they do the visual exam using pictures on the eye chart. She had no problem recognizing the tiny images, however minute. Until . . . Dr. K (AKA "John") shone the light on a tiny little image of a telephone. It was a traditional push-button model where the handset sits on a cradle. The kid had no earthly idea what it was. "Yeah, children are recognizing that one less and less," said Dr. K, who chose a duckling image instead.

I found it pretty humorous that my 21st century kid does not recognize a telephone. Had it been a cell phone or a wireless handset like the ones we have in our house, she would have gotten it. I hope they don't have a record player on the chart somewhere. Every kid in town would walk out of the office wearing Coke-bottle lenses because they failed the exam. Or, as my friend Felix used to refer to his glasses: "Claudia, I have the Great Wall of China ON MY FACE."

Anyway, the exam was pretty uneventful (well, except for the part where my daughter could not master the chin-here-forehead-against-this requirement and pitched forward into the equipment a few times). I asked Dr. K the same question I asked A's pediatrician a few months ago. "So, um, what color are her eyes?" You'd think this would be one of those facts about one's child that would be automatic and obvious, but I promise you it is not cut and dried. When she was younger, her eyes were clearly blue (probably until she was two or so).

Here's a photo to prove it, lest you think I am delusional:

I know that many babies are born with blue eyes, but most change within the first few months (if they are going to change). Up until the last year or so, I would have unequivocally said my daughter's eyes were still blue, But now, some days they appear to be grey, sometimes green, and sometimes blue. So, I thought maybe I should ask someone who knows something about the subject at hand.

"I'll tell you in just a second," Dr. K replied confidently. He looked at her eyes through one of the contraptions and said, "They're hazel." He invited me to look through the lens at my daughter's mega-magnified iris. So, it seems A's eyes have morphed from blue to a pale green ringed with a light golden brown. Dr. K shot down my "grey" theory when he said that in 21 years of practice, he'd only seen three patients with truly grey eyes.

So, mystery solved, I guess. She does have a slight case of astigmatism, but the doctor expects it will probably correct on its own over time.

I know I've posted this before, but it still makes me giggle every time: