Vision...it's what's for lunch

This year the girls started Kindergarten as all 2 of you know. Last Fall we noticed that Riley was putting her face very close to everything she was looking at, reading, etc. and she was walking up to the board a lot to see what it said. When questioned about it she said the board was too far away, that she couldn't tell what it said. I spoke with the teacher, and she told me that the following month they were going to have a vision screening with an optometrist, so we should wait until then to make any decisions. As it turns out she was referred for further examination. Yesterday we picked the girls up at lunch, and finally had that appointment.

We set the appointment for both girls since it was long overdue for both to have an official eye exam. After several different exams, eye dilation x2, and one more exam it was determined that Sam had mostly normal vision. She does have an astigmatism (thank you hereditary), but that is not affecting her vision at the moment. She was/is extremely sad that she does not need glasses. She wants them badly and is insanely jealous of Riley over this issue.

Riley, on the other hand, had far greater problems than we had ever imagined. We (I) had thought that there might be a slight deficit that could be easily corrected with glasses, maybe associated with an astigmatism or the like. Unfortunately we were to find out differently. Apparently she has not been using her left eye at all, and has been letting her right eye do all of the work for both. We don't know how or when this started, but we've been told that it's been caught early enough to fix. Riley has been referred to a specialist who will probably patch her good eye in varying time lengths to help strengthen the weak eye. If that does not work, then the next step would be surgery. Obviously we are praying for the patching to work its' magic.

On to the issue of glasses. She was a little nervous about having to wear them and how the other kids would react, but once she discovered that Sam wanted glasses too it changed everything. She picked out a really cute pair without any assistance from Mom, Dad, or the sales crew. They fitted them out with her prescription, and we were on our way. She donned them for the first time at school today, and was pleasantly surprised by the positive reactions from her classmates. One of the boys came up to her and said, "I really like your glasses, they look very nice on you." This was without any prompting from anyone. As for the girls in the class, they were just as complimentary and it would now appear that all the girls in her class want glasses too. Success!

Updates to follow in June.