The Vision Confusion

The Tiny Girl I Can and Can’t See Chronicles:
I would like to tell you my daughter’s vision is getting better.   I would like to give you amazing stories of her threading a needle (something she used to do in school) and how her needlepoint won unprecedented awards for accuracy at the state fair, but alas, I cannot.   I can, however, tell you conflicting stories of visual feats and you can make your own judgements.

Today after school I came home and my daughter didn’t know I’d gotten home.   I made the “shhh” motion to my husband (that’s the bit where you put your index finger over your mouth) and went up to my daughter.   I held up the bottle of drops.    She asked, “mommy?”   I picked her up and kissed her.   She said, “mommy, is that you?”  I did hug-type maneuvers I typically do with her and she asked again if I was mom.   I held up the bottle of drops and she turned away.   Then, she said, “mom, did you change your hair color?”

And YES, I had just come home from having my hair lightened.   My son didn’t notice at all  (he is a man after all) but my daughter with her gimpy vision did notice.   So could she see me all along?

This morning she came up to me before school and asked if her fingernails were still painted.   Our neighbor, Bryna, had painted them orange and then had put little black dots with a paint brush on each one on Saturday night.   My daughter effectively had ten pumpkin fingernails, but she couldn’t tell if they were orange and black or not colored at all.   I asked her if she could tell and she did the stress behavior she does where she sticks her tongue out and pulls her mouth apart with her fingers.   She avoided my questions very aggressively twice more and then said, sadly, she couldn’t tell if they were painted or not.

And finally, tonight when we were getting ready for bed she asked me if I was going to sign her up for gymnastics at the place we went to before.   I asked her why she had thought of that place and she told me it was because of the shirt she picked out today to wear (which was the gymnastics shirt from the place we went to before.)

So can she see or can she not see?  That is the question.

The Big Boy Update:  My son took streaking his pants to new heights today, leaving such a large “streak” in his pants it fell out the bottom of his pants leg and he stepped on it in our master bedroom.   I was out getting my hair colored but I heard stories of the legendary anger of dad and his carpet cleaning tirade that happened afterwards.   I hope he struck some fear in my son, who was too busy looking at a screen to bother going to the bathroom.