Look who got glasses

When Reed had his 8 year old checkup, I was surprised to see he didn't do well with their mini-eye exam. They said he was borderline for being referred for a full eye exam. Then a couple of weeks ago, I was reading the clock from across the house, and he said he couldn't see the numbers. Wow. I finally got around to making him an appointment, and today was the day. Sure enough, he is slightly nearsighted, enough to warrant glasses. He quickly picked a pair of glasses and we returned a few hours later to pick them up.

To our surprise, Reed was excited about it and happy to have the glasses. Of course, he hasn't run into any pals yet, so we'll see what happens when other kids see his new look. Hopefully it will go easy for him.

He's supposed to wear the glasses for general everyday stuff like being in the classroom or around the house, but not for reading. We'll see how that goes.

In doing a little online research, it looks like nearsightedness can be hereditary (both Tod and I are nearsighted [or he was before laser surgery, anyway]) and they think it can also be caused by too much "close work" (i.e. reading). Well bingo, there's your recipe for glasses in the second grade! I guess in this case, too much reading is bad for you.

Lately, Reed has been very into Harry Potter. I can't recall when he started reading the books, but I think it's only been about 6 weeks. He's blown through them, finishing some in a single day (school days, no less...what's he doing in that classroom?). Even though I'm told some of the books, particularly the last few, have really scary parts [bad parents for not pre-reading the books, I guess], that hasn't seemed to bother him at all. When he was reading book 7, he said "I think for a reward when I finish all 7 books, I should get to watch the movie." So that's what we did. He enjoyed the movie so much that the next day he started re-reading the series. That was last Saturday (7 days ago), and he's read all of books 1-3, is reading book 4 at school and book 7 at home. The speed with which he goes through books is amazing. But he seems to catch all the details, even in books like these that have a lot of words that he's not familiar with.

With these glasses (for today, at least), he's happily receiving compliments that he looks like Harry Potter. Hopefully he'll continue to feel good about the glasses.