little four eyes

Ok, so I love Target in general and sometimes think I should just hand over our paycheck to them at times, but I’m even more lucky because our Target is a super Target and has an optical store in it and that’s where we got Sam’s glasses.

It’s been about 14 months since he got his first pair. We are now on to pair #3. Last week, he came up to me holding them in his hands and said “Momma, the glass fell out of my glasses!”
Sure enough, it had. I was hoping that the lens had just popped out, but discovered that the frame was broken. I don’t know what happened to it, and Sam says that he was wearing his glasses when the lens just fell out. But, he is prone to throwing them when mad, so I’m guessing that it finally caught up with us.

So, off to Target we go. Now, I’m totally expecting to have to buy new frames and we do. But I was so happy to find that they still had the same frames in stock, so we didn’t have to buy new lenses. And, they have a one year warranty on them, so we only had to pay half price for them.

So, I think that the Target Optical store totally rocks for keeping the same pair of frames in stock for 14 months and having a pretty decent warranty on kids frames.

I’ve never seen glasses do this before, but one of the coatings is peeling off of Sam’s glasses.  It is really bad right in the middle of the left lense, so we are going to replace that one.  He has an appointment coming up with his eye dr in just 2 1/2 months, and odds are his prescription is going to change so we decided not to replace both lenses even though they both need replacing.  The left one is really bad, though.

Anyone else ever had a lense to do this? Here’s a picture, although I don’t know how much you can see.

We haven’t had much going on here.  Sam still throws his glasses when he’s mad. We make regular runs to get them adjusted.

The only new thing is that Sam has come home from preschool a few times complaining that one of the other boys keeps trying to play with his glasses.  I just reassurred him that he could tell JG that he couldn’t touch them, and tell the teacher if he needed to.

Last night, there was an open house at the school, and Ms Anne, his teacher was telling us that a few of the kids were having problems keeping their hands to themselves (Hey, its a bunch of 3 yr olds, what do you expect?).  I mentioned Sam’s complaint about JG to her, and she said yes, that was one of the problems.  She wears glasses, too, and the kids have never tried to mess with her’s, but they are all fascinated with Sam’s.  According to Ms. Anne, the other kids keep saying that “he’s so cute!” and that’s why they want to touch his glasses.

Kids are so strange.

Target’s optical shop was open yesterday, Labor Day.  The husband took Sam down there to see if the glasses could be fixed. They could not. But, as luck would have it, they had the frames in stock and were able to just pop the lenses into the new frames.  Since the frames were less than a year old, we were able to replace them for 50% off. Yay.  And since we didn’t have to replace the lenses, it wasn’t that painful in the wallet.

If they break in the first 90 days, they will replace them for free, which is nice to know.

Sam’s glasses got broken this evening.  We’re not sure how, and I don’t even think he did it. I honestly think Emma did the damage, based on her declaration that “It was an accident, Mama!” when I asked her what happened.

The husband ran down to Target in the hopes of a repair, but the optical shop was closed. We’ll be there bright and early tomorrow morning, though. Keep your fingers crossed that they will be open since tomorrow is a holiday. Cross another couple of fingers that they can be fixed.  I’m not terribly hopeful, but the arm is broken with the hinge still intact.  I don’t know how they broke like that, but maybe, just maybe, the arm can be fixed.

Honestly, I’m sort of surprised that the glasses have lasted this long. I mean, one rambunctious three year old boy + one pair of rather fragile glasses = they will get broken eventually.  And he’s planted his face on the driveway, the floor, the ground, etc so  many times, it’s a wonder that it took 5 months for them to get broken.

My 6 year old daughters had a check up today and Emma failed the eye exam.  Now, I’m not really surprised at this, since I’m half blind, the man of the house was until the lucky dog had lasik surgery and of course, Sam wears glasses.  We have all that lovely family history on my side of the family, too.  But, I’ve always hoped that they would managed to avoid the bad eye genes.  Apparently, we’re batting 2 out of 3 now.  So, they will be setting up an appointment for her with the ophthomologist sometime soon.

If she does need glasses, I’m going to be saying “Well, crap” again, because that will leave just one without them, and Emma and Ellie both have been begging for months to get glasses.  So, I’ll be listening to lots of complaining from Ellie over her lack of fashionable eyewear.

There is some bit of irony in the fact that I have to let my toddler wear a relatively expensive pair of glasses so that he can see. You can bet your biscuits that I wouldn’t let him run around with anything else that cost that much all day, every day. Lately Sam has been taking his glasses off to look at them and sort of explore them and quite frankly just to play with them. I try to remind myself to just calmly tell him to put them back on, but tonight in the car, I looked back and he had the arms bent way out. I found myself screeching at him “Put those back on, they aren’t a toy!”

But the truth is, I, and all of us with little kids in glasses, pretty much have to trust that they are going to happily, or not so happily, wear these expensive glasses, leave them on their faces, not play with them, not break them, just wear them. That’s a lot to expect out of a little kid, because little kids are so curious. And, well, the glasses do belong to him. If he wants to look at them, then he has that right. But, hey kid! Put them back on your face. They aren’t a toy!

I know lots of kids wear glasses because of lazy eye and what not that causes their eyes to cross. But Sam is just really near sighted and has never had problems with is eyes crossing. Only, just this week he was sitting in my bed after just waking up that morning and talking to me. He hadn’t put his glasses on yet and I noticed when he looked at me, one eye turned in a little bit.

Could this just be from him trying to focus? As soon as I put his glasses on him, it went away. I don’t know what to think about it.

Said Sam this morning when he put his glasses on.  Heehee! I’m pretty sure that he has reached the point where he realizes that he sees better with them on and is happy to wear them. Yay!

In fact, I think that big sisters are a little jealous of Sam being able to wear glasses like Mama does.  We’ve had to make several trips to Target’s optical shops for adjustments to Sam’s glasses (face plants on the floor are hard on their alignment) and the girls like to try on the display frames.  Now, they keep telling me that they are having trouble seeing the tv and such, when it is abundantly clear that they aren’t, at least not to any noticeable extent.  If either of them ends up needing glasses, I think it will be Emma, because her eyes are starting to have that weak look that I see in pictures of myself and Sam pre-glasses.  Hopefully it will be a few years before she needs them, though, even though she wants them now.

Tuesday was field day for my daughters’ kindy class (their class won 2 1st, 2 2nd and 3 3rds, btw), so Sam and I went to watch and cheer them on. We were on our way out when one of the custodians stopped me to ask about Sam’s glasses. That’s not so odd, although I did laugh when he asked if Sam had been a preemie. Yes, I know that being a preemie can cause a need for glasses (although I think that is happening less as the technology advances). The girls were preemies, and weighed about 2.5lbs each. Sam, on the other hand, I was begging to evict my uterus at 39.5 weeks and he weighed a whopping 10lbs, 10oz when he was born. Hence, the laughter.

Anyway, the guy keeps asking me questions, although he never actually asked why Sam wears glasses, and eventually asked me who his eye doctor is. I told him, and he promptly got all concerned and urged me to get a second opinion and not to worry about offending Dr. E, but to just get a second opinion. His reason was that his brother had been a patient of Dr. E when he was a kid and claimed that Dr. E misdiagnosed him and now the brother is going to be blind by the time he is 40. He claimed there was some surgery that could have been done that Dr. E didn’t recommend.

Now, I have sympathy with the guy and his brother. He never told me what his brother’s diagnosis was, so I have no idea if he is just a bitter family member blaming something on the doctor instead of the fates that landed him with an eye problem, or if the doctor really might have made a mistake or if some advance has been made in treatments that weren’t available when his brother was a child or what. For what it’s worth, our optical store sang the praises of Dr. E, so who knows.

But the guy just would not let us go. I was trying to inch my way down the hallway and just kept talking and talking all the while going on and on about the fact that his brother was going to be blind because of Dr. E.

I appreciate the concern in my child’s eye health, but this guy really needs to work on his approach, because he didn’t come across as concerned family member looking out for other people, but rather as bitter and vindictive. Even so, I have an appointment with my ophthalmologist in a few weeks and I’ll ask him to look at Sam, too. It can’t hurt, after all.