When I got my new glasses a couple of months ago, Owlet did a lot of sighing and trying on frames of her own, saying, “I wish I could have glasses.”

Well, this happened yesterday:

No warning, no chance to prepare her; I thought this was a consultation regarding the patch the optometrist had told me about two weeks ago during the kids’ trip to the eye doctor (Owlet’s first visit). He said he needed to see her again for a proper examination and evaluation, because small children’s eyes focus really, really well, and he needed to relax her eye muscles so he could do a proper test without the eyes trying to compensate. What he did know was that she was farsighted and her left eye was weaker, and he thought perhaps she may need to wear a patch on the good eye to force the weak eye to improve. So Owlet and I went to the optometrist yesterday morning, and they gave her the drops to relax her eyes; then we went to get ice cream while the drops took effect. Once back in the doctor’s office, he took about three minutes to peer at her eyes and flip a few dials, then boom, a glasses prescription. (Good thing I’d gotten mine a couple of months ago, so she’d seen me go through the process.) She is to wear them all the time for six weeks, then he’s going to check her eyes again. He says that often wearing a prescription like this full-time at this age can train the weak eye to work better. If it hasn’t improved as much as he’d like, she’ll wear a patch and the glasses.

I struck while the iron was hot and went next door to Lenscrafters. There were plenty of purple ones, even ones with butterflies on the temples, and she tried them all on. These were the final pair (they weren’t purple, so they weren’t initially on her radar), and they look terrific. They have little Elsa cameos on the temples, with ‘Elsa’ engraved on the arms with a little flourish. Apparently they were new in that morning, so we were lucky! We had lunch out while the lenses were made, then went back to pick them up and get them properly fitted. She got a pink plastic case for them, too, which I think she’s even more enthralled with than the glasses. I’d like to take a moment to bless Lenscrafters for their policy of 50% off both kids’ frames and lenses, and the $35 protection plan for kids’ glasses that covers everything minus a small deductible. (I’m told something like 95% of the plans purchased get used, and knowing how kids play, I don’t doubt it.)

The technician warned us not to have her wear them in the car, in case the change in vision made her a bit sick, so she put them once we were at home. But then, after she’d shown them off, she wanted to put them carefully back in their case and go off and do her regular thing without them. We helped her work through her initial resistance to wearing them at home; there has been lots of encouragement about how great she looks and how special it is that she gets lovely glasses and a case when none of her friends have them. Ceri had given us a copy of Fancy Nancy: Spectacular Spectacles when I got my glasses and Owlet was envious of them, so we sat on her bed together, both wearing our glasses, and read the book. This time, instead of identifying with Nancy, who is jealous of her best friend Bree’s new glasses, Owlet got to identify with Bree, who is happy to be able to see things without blurs and without her eyes hurting.

I took a peek through them when she took them off, and wow — that left eye is bad. We had no clue; her right eye has been working hard to take care of everything, so there was no evidence or obvious clues that she was missing details. HRH said this morning that he noticed she wasn’t hesitating as much on stairs and was moving out of the way of things more precisely than she had been doing previously, though, so what we thought was general preschooler klutziness or wandering attention may have been related to her vision. We’ll no doubt notice various other improvements in the next few weeks.

If we can get her used to them this weekend — and so far, so good — then going to daycare with them will be easier. She wearing them cheerfully when I got up this morning, which is a great start, and she was excited to go visit her oldest godsisters today to show them off. (Our eldest goddaughter has been wearing glasses since she was a toddler, so I am sure she will have encouraging words for Owlet, too.)

I was fine with her turning four this week, but turning four and suddenly looking so much older while wearing her first pair of glasses? This, I wasn’t prepared for.

More backlog! This should have been published on 4 July.

We have some excellent sharing happening, and the kids are playing well together more and more. Owlet seems to really enjoy offering people turns with her favourite things, or bites of a treat. On the other side of the coin, she is getting very defensive about perceived aggression, going so far as to shriek at someone to stay away from her if they turn in her direction on the other side of the backyard. I think this is a combination of running on old information (the people she’s hypersensitive about at preschool are the ones who had trouble reining in their excitement and understanding personal space this past winter) and a new understanding that an action arises out of intent and often can be signalled ahead of time. She will also attribute bumps or scrapes to people who hit her, when they weren’t even around at the time of the incident, when an educator tells us that she tripped or fell against a table or something. Again, old information, and that sneaky interweaving of truth and imagined events.

Her play is slowly becoming more self-directed, thank goodness. If I’m there, she wants to play right on top of me, but if HRH is the one there (or if I am Unavailable, as I am when I go upstairs to work), she’s pretty good at going into her room to play with her dollhouse or her ponies on her own. All we hear is an ongoing ripple of low-level conversation between her toys as she narrates whatever’s happening, and it’s great.

She has been doing some lovely taking-care-of-people things, too. I was sick this past month, and horrible stomach cramps were part of it. Owlet tucked me in on the couch(terfield) and asked if I wanted her to gently rub my tummy so I would feel better. I was charmed by how sweet and solicitous she was being, so I said yes. She gently moved her hand in light circles on it, then said, “There, I’m feeling you better.” And when Sparky was ill, she brought him some of her favourite toys and books to keep him company and cheer him up. (These are usually received grumpily, but we remind him to appreciate the gestures for the spirit in which they were made.)

In other ways, she is very much a child of her age. There’s a lot of ignoring us going on if she’s asked to do something she doesn’t want to do, or saying an automatic “Okay” when we insist on confirmation, and then doing what she wants to do anyway. This leads to repeated orders with the parent’s frustration increasing, until the foot comes down and there are Consequences enacted. Then there are tears and the “You hurt my feelings!” accusation, for which we are told to apologize. I wonder how much of the ignoring stems from the automatic “okay” said without really processing what was asked, and how much of it is unconsciously pushing to see how much she can get away with. Sometimes HRH asks her to look at him, make eye contact, and then repeat what he said; that occasionally has a better success rate. I’m going to try to remember to do that more often.

Her language has leveled up as well. One morning I was in another room while the kids were playing in the play kitchen. I overheard this:

Owlet: “Let’s eat the recipe.”
Sparky: “We don’t eat recipes, we eat the food made from recipes.
Owlet: “But… we make recipes, so… we eat recipes.”

My kids, debating the fine points of language at eight in the morning.

Her current favourite films are Mulan and The Legend of the Neverbeast. Those, plus The Song of the Sea, are on frequent rotation. Her very favourite book right now we only got on July 1, and it is Kate Beaton’s utterly fantastic The Princess and the Pony, co-starring her fabulous Fat Pony from her history comics at Hark! A Vagrant.

When Owlet goes to the ice cream parlour, her favourite flavour is “Pink!”

Fine motor control has leveled up; for example, she’s becoming remarkably proficient with a knife at mealtimes. She’s got that fork in a death grip, but she actually managed to cut up her pancakes!

Her art is becoming more focused and precise as well, although she does still like to make huge gestures with a lot of colour, too. Wonder where she gets that from?

Slowly chipping away at the backlog… this post dates back to 4 June.

I’ve realized that I need to start documenting Owlet’s art more. She brings things home from preschool that go up on her door for a while and then get taken down as she brings new art home, and it’s usually ratty or torn by that point, so into the recycling it goes.

It’s spring, so they did a lot of bug and bird art at school this past month. This is a caterpillar made of a bamboo skewer and pompoms! There is a paper leaf on the front end for it to nibble. They made a kind of mobile with twigs and branches they found on one of their walks, criss-crossed and tied together then hung from the ceiling; all the caterpillars were tucked into the assembly for parents to admire. When she brought it home, we put it in the enormous hibiscus plant that lives on top of her dresser.

They did an insect collage with some precut elements, but added their own grass, and additional bugs. The educators say it’s fun to watch how creative the kids can get with the non-precut stuff to make grass or flowers or other bugs. As a parent, it’s fun to look at how much the finished art varies from kid to kid.

And they built birdhouse pictures!

At home, her stories are becoming more elaborate, and weave together things that actually happened with imagined stuff (“and then” is rapidly becoming a phrase that makes me tense up, and is the latest in a series of things I’d like to apologize about to my mother, for having to cope with me doing the exact same thing when I was a child). Her educators have noticed this as well, and they’re having the same challenge we are, sifting through what she says to figure out what is real and what is added in. (For example, while it is impossible that we have a pet badger at home but it ran away and got lost, it is possible that we had a stuffed badger that was misplaced. Or, in this particular case, we don’t have a badger at all, real, stuffed, or lost.)

She sings a lot. Sometimes it’s actual songs; sometimes she just tells a story in a long song that she makes up. There is a lot of love for Muppet Treasure Island songs in particular happening these days. Her favourite book is currently Fancy Nancy and the Spectacular Spectacles, courtesy of Ceri, because Owlet desperately wanted glasses when I got my new pair. And her favourite movie is Song of the Sea, a film which I firmly believe ought to have won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. (I liked Big Hero Six a lot, and it was very shiny, but Song of the Sea is a better film on many wonderful levels.)

The best new word she has come up with is ‘couchterfield,’ and I love it and want her to use it forever.

Finally, we have reached a point where she says she is big enough to not require the toddler seat on the toilet. Huzzah! Now if only she could understand that she does not need a length of toilet paper a metre long, we’d really be getting somewhere.

Her hair is long and spirals into absolutely killing ringlets. It also tangles easily, and like most kids she doesn’t like having her hair brushed. We try to stay on top of it by misting it in the morning and combing it out wit a bit of conditioner, then braiding it at night. We’ve been experimenting with updos to keep it out of her face, and those are fun, too. Or they are when we can get her past “Braid my hair like Elsa’s!”