Y’all Say Hello to Specs

Over the course of the school year thus far, we’ve noticed Katy having a bit of a problem with her vision. Of course, it wasn’t unexpected. Preemies often have eyesight problems, and KatyBeth herself suffered from retinopathy of prematurity and had surgical correction of strabismus before she was two years old.

But lately, particularly late in the day when she’s doing her homework, we’ve noticed her squinting a lot, and having trouble focusing.

So Friday we visited the pediatric opthalmologist who performed her surgery, and she was diagnosed with presbyopia, mild astigmatism in her right eye, and still a touch of strabismus – all of which, thankfully, can be easily managed with corrective lenses.

We’d been preparing the munchkin that she may need glasses, so when the doctor told her she’d be getting a pair of specs so she could do better with her schoolwork, she replied, “Yeah, and Daddy says I’ll be able to see targets better, too!”

He gave an amused chuckle and asked, “Does your Daddy let you shoot a BB gun, sweetie?”

To which she replied, matter-of-factly, “Nah, I have a pink Cricket .22, and Daddy lets me shoot his pistol and his .17 HMR, but he says when I get bigger I can get an AR 15!”

That last sentence, of course, delivered with all the hushed gravitas of a pre-teen solemnly informing her schoolmates that she had gotten backstage passes for the Hannah Montana concert: “Back. Stage. PASSES. Y’all.”

So yesterday we picked up her new “specs,” as she calls them, and she has been proudly sporting them around all day. And I can say, without a touch of bias, that my kid rocks a pair of spectacles like nobody’s business:

And she had a dandy time riding the Ferris Wheel at the fair yesterday, too.