Nothing

My daughter found a flashlight the other day.   I watched as she held it up and put it directly in front of her eye.   I know you're probably having the same mental reaction to yell, "No!  Don't ever look at bright lights directly."   Other things like how it will damage your eyes come to mind as well.   But in this case, I just stood there and watched her.  

I asked her what she was doing when she pulled it away from right in front of her eye.   She said, "I was checking to see if I could see anything with the right eye."   This is the eye that sustained the most damage from the infection and follow-on months, years even of ocular challenges.   Failure to thrive is a phrase I would say could even be used.   She had a collection of things wrong or unstable in her eyes.  It didn't take much to tip the scale, causing a catastrophic collection of events to occur which ultimately took all the vision from the eye.

I asked my daughter, "could you see anything?"  "Nope, nothing at all," she replied in a rather upbeat sort of, "I just verified something I've been suspecting for a good while now and it's good to have an answer" kind of way like a lab technician might note results on a clipboard.

She then wanted to shine the light in the left eye.   This is the eye that has some very unknown amount of vision.   It's so hard to tell what she can and can't see.   Is it shadows and large forms only?  She zips around the house and any areas she knows well.   She isn't completely accurate and can still bump into walls.   She doesn't know where things are in front of her or far away.  I don't think she can tell colors but maybe she can know that something isn't a dark or light color.  It's very hard to tell.  

It's easy to want her to see more than she does so I always wait until I have proof she can see something.   She can magically see a lot of times.   This is a term I'm using for situations where my daughter will tell you or someone about a thing that would indicate she could see it.   She's tricky.   If she's heard someone else talk about it or remembers it from before or any number of ways in which she could "see" something when really she "knows" it.

When she held the light up to her left eye the other day, I let her do it because she needed to find out what she could see for herself.   I asked her if she could see the. W light and she said, "of course" in a tone of voice that said she couldn't believe I'd even asked her that.   Then I asked her if she could see shapes and things and she told me she could see lots of things.   We didn't get into more than that. She says she's only half-blind.   Finding out what that sighted part sees is very hard to nail down.

The Big Boy Update: My son likes to be a parent.   He wants to mostly be a parent when it comes to doling out punishments.   This typically means his sister.   I think in part he's trying to help.   It doesnt come across that way to his sister though.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter came into the bonus room where I'm working here and stated, "I need this room" in a definitive tone.   I told her I was still working but she was welcome to work with me here.   She got her braillewriter and a stack of about fifty sheets of braille paper and left.   I asked why she needed to leave and she told me it was something for mother's day and she liked to talk to herself out loud while she typed and so she had to go to another room.