Changes

Lily has had a couple changes in the last few weeks. The first one was fairly major. After months and months of asking her to not stand on the couch while watching TV and standing super close to TVs other than ours, I decided to take her to the eye doctor. Turns out the kid needs glasses. In fact, she's more nearsighted than I am - which compared to Erik's prescription, isn't hard. But still...the girl's only 4. So I'm sure we'll be getting thicker and thicker lenses for the poor thing until she's old enough to handle contacts.

So after two trips to the eye doctor (once for the exam and once more for dilation), it was official. We looked at a couple pairs of cute frames at in their office, but good heavens! They were so expensive for something that she's probably going to break...even with the warranty, I found it hard to justify spending that much. So we checked out our trusty Wal-mart...much more reasonable. And considering that when we told her to pick one from a few choices and she told us, "But I don't want to wear the same glasses every day," I'm really thinking cheaper is the way to go. We'll probably end up buying at least one more pair so she can change it up when she wants to.

I really do think it's made a difference for her. Of course, she didn't know she couldn't see. But now she can, and I think she's much happier. The first couple hours were a little odd, I think, since she almost tripped several times and she was very fascinated with the floor while she was walking. And apparently, "Everything is so shiny!" But she will now sit on the couch to watch TV (it probably doesn't hurt that we rearranged the living room so standing on the couch wouldn't help anyway) and I know she's seeing (see what I did there???) an improvement because after her gymnastics warm up the other day, she changed her mind and decided she wanted to wear them. She's been really good about remembering to put them on, and other than the small mishap of leaving them on the floor to get stepped on, she's been pretty careful with them. A little tweaking, and they looked good as new. And she looks so darn cute!

The second change, you can see in that picture, too. Lily now rocks bangs. Yesterday, she was walking around with her hair completely in her face. And this isn't an unusual occurrence. Gone are the days that she will sit and let me do something completely cute with her hair. We've reached the point that we're lucky if she lets us brush it every day. Although since we bought a hair bean (highly recommended for anyone with a daughter), we can usually manage a brush-through with little resistance. But since rubberbands is now a bad word, the sides and front just fall in front of her eyes. It would drive me crazy, but she doesn't seem to mind. Which does drive me crazy. So I opted to make the most of the situation. The hair that normally falls in her face is now short enough that she can still see. Problem solved.

With a new hair cut and new glasses, she's adorable, as always. But she also seems so grown up. She turns 5 in January, and I can't wrap my poor head around that. She's sure fun and is just growing so fast. She's suddenly discovered descriptive words, so everything is beautiful or cool or fantastic. She told me the other day that she wants to be a parent when she grows up...instead of a mail carrier. When I told her she could be both, she was so excited! And when she gives me a hug, she tells me she can hear my heart beeping. I hope I'll always remember this stage when she tries to show all she knows and is so eager to learn more. There's rarely a day when she doesn't make me proud of her in some way. She's definitely my special girl.