Charles and Christy’s Weblog

Had lasik yesterday. Eyes are really bloodshot today. Had 1-day checkup this morning and am 20/25 in R eye, 20/30 in L. Will post more as I learn more.

We’ve been trying to do one major home improvement project each year. In 2005 it was fully fencing in the back yard. In 2006, it was adding central air conditioning and a patio in the backyard. Last year we scraped and repainted the outside of the house.

This year, well we spent most of this year raising Clark.

The appliances that came with the house were all of mediocre quality and usability. The range was particularly bad. Recipes would take almost twice as long baking time in the oven and water would take 20 min to boil. Most of the time it seemed to be heating the house more than the food.

Sears is running a 20% rebate so we pulled the trigger on all new appliances. The dishwasher arrived on Tuesday and I payed Sears the extra $170 to have it installed.

Today the range arrived and I’m going to give the install a shot without their help.

So far so good, I haven’t blown up the house while disconnecting the old range. Now the fun part - we’ll see how long it takes to have it working.

The “heat” is on because Christy wants to bake Christmas cookies this weekend.

On Saturday we deemed him officially mobile.  What no one ever tells you is that these milestones (sitting up, crawling, walking I expect) are never singular events. They are gradual changes.  It is a fallacy to write “the date” that these happened in a baby book.  Instead you should write the two-week window in which it happened.

Come to think of it, that’s also true for “the due date.”  Instead it should be “the due month.”

It’s been a long time since I wrote a blog post.  But it’s been an incredibly busy year so that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.  However that busy-ness is all the more reason I should be writing posts.  So here goes.

This morning I had an evaluation for Lasik treatment.  It turns out I’m a candidate for the procedure.  And it turns out it would cost $4400.  I expected the kinda-schlocky “marketing” of the procedure.  I expected the cost.  I expected the explanations of how the eye works and what tests they go through to ensure I’m a candidate.

I didn’t expect to find myself crying in the parking lot afterwards.

I can only focus about 2+ inches in front of my face without eyewear.  I’ve had corrective eyewear for as long as I can remember.  I got glasses in 1st grade.  When I went to school the next day, one of my classmates thought I was a new student because she didn’t recognize me with glasses.  My prescription degraded at an alarming rate and in 6th grade I got rigid gas permeable contact lenses. I wore those every day until the last few years when I went back to glasses.

I think what triggered my crying in the parking lot was the realization that poor vision has been part of my identity for all of my growing up years.  All my school pictures in elementary school show me with very nerdy four-eyes.  When I got contacts I felt cooler and less nerdy during my junior high and teen years.  I was one of the first kids to get glasses in elementary school and I was definitely the first kid to get contacts.

I don’t know if I’ll have it done anytime soon or if at all.  It’s kinda scary to have someone messing around with your cornea.  And there are lots of spending priorities already at our house.  But it may be even a bigger fear to let go of that piece of my identity and leave it behind forever.

It may also be incredibly liberating.

I am now a firm believer that we all start out as scientists… and I’m not sure why so many of us quit being scientists.  Clark is experimenting every day, taking in data, and designing his next experiment (no explicit hypotheses as far as I know).  He wants to touch everything and taste most things.  He experiments with his physicality as well as his voice.  He is fearless and, thus, inspiring.  He watches the people around him and emulates them or tries to solicit a reaction from them… without much trouble since he’s so cute and precocious.  He’s inspired me to ask many questions like, “How do we learn what a smile means?,” “How do we learn to laugh?,” and “Why do we need to experience pain?”  I suspected that one of my favorite parts of being a parent would be watching my baby learn all the things I take for granted, and I was right.  I love watching this perfect little person explore the world around him without prejudice.  I recognized that I am charged to continually challenge him and expose him to new things while respecting his preferences… even if they don’t end up being for science.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written and a lot has happened.  After Clark’s birth, I went through a lot of different emotional stages.  I was so excited to finally have him here with us and I was amazed by him.  I was obsessed with every detail of what he was doing or not doing.  I was depressed that his birth didn’t go the way I wanted.  I was worried because the early days (I can say this in retrospect but at the time it seemed like a very long time) of nursing did not go smoothly at all.  I was impressed with myself that I had the tenacity to stick with nursing and find a way to make it work (no problem now!).  I loved watching Charles with Clark.  I was frustrated that I couldn’t figure out how to keep my family (that live far away) in the loop on our daily lives.  I was surprised at how much I didn’t ever want to leave my little guy.  I started to miss the community of people I got to know as we prepared for Clark’s birth (our doulas, our Bradley class peers, the Childbirth Collective folks), and I found a new parenting community (ICAN and Attachment Parenting).  I was shocked at how hard it was to get simple things done.  I was impressed by the amazing support we received from our family and friends (I don’t know if there’s a little guy more loved than ours).  I was worried because the dogs  did not adjust easily (a huge understatement!) to the life change. I was overwhelmed by the task of finding childcare.  I was traumatized by the act of leaving Clark at day care (even though we found an amazing place).  My life is totally different.  It’s clear to me now that I didn’t know how different life would be… I was arrogant… I thought I would be able to organize this new person into the previous version of my life.  I know now that nothing is done for my convenience.  If we stray from what Clark needs, everything goes haywire.  So, he sleeps when he’s tired (and you never want to wake a sleeping baby), eats when he’s hungry, and plays the rest of the time.  I do the things I need to do when I can but there’s a lot more stuff going undone right now.  I am surprisingly OK with this.