Babe with glasses

Theo started a new school today!  We’re really excited about this, as he’ll get way more attention and care at his new place.  Natan and I both went with him and spent an hour in his new space and with his new peeps.  He seems really happy there, so I am not at all worried about this transition.  Plus, we have only 9 more weeks until the summer (holla), when we can really tailor his classes/experiences because we can both morph into full time chauffeurs (ah, parenting)!  It is years like these that I am so very glad that we are teachers and in jobs that support us as parents and workers.  There have been lots of appointments/missed hours/leaving early days that we’ve had to take, and our family journey has been pretty seamless at our jobs.  Our dear coworkers have taught parts of our classes and taken over duties when needed, and for that I am grateful that we are where we are in life right now.  

Our glasses battle is still ongoing.  We’re also supposed to start patching his strong eye to help build the muscles in his lazy one, but he just rips the patch off immediately.  I’m kind of just assuming he’ll have to have surgery to correct his eye when he’s old enough (I think 4 is the age they do it?).  I don’t think I’ve ever talked about his glasses on this blog before, but I sure have learned a lot about pediatric vision issues over the last four months!  To summarize:  Basically, when kids are around 18 months, something changes in how they focus their eyes/how the brain processes vision.  It is around this time that some children start to go cross-eyed or develop a lazy eye.  This is usually because they are farsighted, but it can also be due to a small optic nerve.  In Theo’s case, it’s probably just farsightedness.  They make special baby glasses to try to correct the problem, and then move on to patching in conjunction with glasses (2 hrs/day of patching).  This whole arrangement can take a few years to correct the lazy eye.  If, after that point, it hasn’t corrected, then they can surgically fix it to make the eyes track together.  Sometimes it’s hard to see what he’s focusing on, but then sometimes he looks pretty normal.  I think in the grand scheme of things it’s a moderate lazy eye (this is based on a late night google image search).  So now, whenever I see a baby with glasses, I totally empathize with the parent, because even though they have a band, the kid can so easily pull them off.  It’s a total nightmare to try to get a 2-year old to wear glasses full time.  

Yesterday Theo went to his first Purim carnival, where he crawled around on concrete (he prefers it to the slight wetness of grass) and refused a snowcone (how could he be any son of mine?).  He dressed up as Oscar the Grouch again.  There was also ANOTHER Theo there and so many other curly haired kids! (proof positive that he's Jewish)
 
In sad new that I learned today, my logic professor from college died.  Logic was a class that was a requirement for all philosophy majors (I completed the requirements for that major too (!) and enjoyed it more than geology, though the U of C didn’t officially give double majors at that point.  It was just a(n awesome) note on my transcript).  It should be a requirement for all majors, I think, as it’s just good brain building.  It was such a transformative class for me because 1.  It was interesting to apply method/math to analyzing arguments and I think it made me smarter (up for debate) and 2.  It was a class in which I was perpetually a week behind in comprehension. I would finally understand the material the week after we had a quiz on it, which sucked for my grade, but was kind of awesome proof that I was actually learning.  I now use this course as my anecdote for my mentees when we talk about grades vs. actually learning and the disconnect between the two.  Grading systems are inherently flawed, but it doesn’t diminish the real value of the education (try telling that to a high school kid who wants to get into the best college possible, but at least I try).

PRUETT OUT.