A little clarity

Yeahhh the kids are back in school, and is that a collective sigh of relief I hear this morning?

Actually, I’ve rather enjoyed having Truett around with me all day this past month. He’d join me for breakfasts, to the market, off to run errands; it feels just like the time we had just him and me before all the other kids came along.

Last night, I was helping Tru to pack his bag for school, feeling thoroughly pleased with myself for being such a responsible parent. I’d gone through his homework early, and even prepped him for next semester’s spelling, it’s all good. When suddenly, he was all “OH NO, I NEED TO BRING PICTURES OF STUFF WE DID DURING THE SCHOOL HOLIDAYS!!”

“Wow, ok, we had a whole month to do this and you tell me this now just before bedtime? I can’t get you prints by tomorrow morning but here, I’ll draw you a panel of stick figures hanging out at the zoo and you can colour them in.”

Sigh.

***

Of all the kids, Finn has had the biggest battles with separation anxiety. He was doing well for a bit, but the past few months, he’s been sad and teary eyed when it’s time for school every morning. This morning, he was in tears again while he was leaving for school and turns out that he’s got a mild fever so the husband brought him back home to rest.

“I’m so happy I get to see you, mommy!!” he announced as he got home.

Incidentally, he’s completely well now with no fever or any other signs of discomfort. Some kids try to fake an illness, but this boy has perfected the art of giving himself an actual fever at critical moments in life. Very impressive.

the face of victory

***

In other news, I finally had my eyes done last week and I would like to state categorically that my quality of life has improved by 5000%. No, much more.

I’ve been wearing specs since I was 7 and all I can remember is being dependent on glasses and contacts. Dry eyes, itchiness, general eye discomfort, that’s what I’ve learnt to get used to all my life.

One time, I broke my specs and it took a week to have them replaced. I was so miserable that entire week because all I could see were blurry blobs of colour. Waking up to feed the baby (Kirsten!) was exceptionally bad. I tried warming up the milk without putting in my contacts and poured scalding hot water all over my hand instead of the warming bowl. So I ended up having to stuff contacts in my eyes several times a night after wearing them all day.

These days, I open my eyes in the morning and instinctively reach for my glasses but then I realise that wait a minute, I CAN SEE. It’s like waking up to a miracle every morning.

And how was the procedure? Absolutely terrifying.

Everything about it was terrifying: having the suction thing clamp my eyeballs, hearing the laser cut a flap in my cornea (like a rubber band snapping sound), watching the surgeon flip open the flap with his pointy device, smelling the laser burn off parts of me cornea, watching the surgeon flip back the flap with his pointy device, and finally feeling him squeegee the flap down to make sure it’s in place.

After the surgery, my left eye was remarkably pain free but the right eye hurt for 2 straight days like it was being constantly being scraped with a piece of glass. It’s day 4 and I feel much better. It’s just a little dry and sore but I expect that it’ll go away in a week or two.

But for perfect vision, so worth it.