Happy New Year! We’re all starting the year off with glasses. Cookie Monster has a pair. Baby doll has a pair. The giant stuffed panda has a pair and Captain, who doesn’t need glasses, has an $8 fashion pair from Amazon. All because Baby Bop needs glasses.

For months I’ve wondered if Baby Bop’s left eye was doing its own thing. Sometimes it looked like it was focusing and then sometimes it looked like it was on vacation. It didn’t always seem wonky, so maybe I was imagining things.

Then a teacher of one of our classes pulled me aside and asked if I’d noticed that Baby Bop has a lazy eye. SIGH. I guess so.

We make an eye doctor appointment. I’m nervous. Baby Bop screams like we’re trying to kill her when all we want is her length measurement.

Captain takes the day off work. We’ll both be there. When I make the appointment I ask,

“How do you do it? We just had to abort a haircut because she was in a panic.”

“Oh we’re used to it.”

Used to the screaming and being able to examine a screaming toddler’s eyesight seem like two very different things. We show up and there are several other toddlers in the waiting room. One goes before us and we can hear the screaming. This is not encouraging.

And now Baby Bop does sympathy screaming. We were in a restaurant the other night and she was perfectly happy coloring away. A kid, not even in eyesight, started screaming. So Baby Bop screamed. He stopped and she went back to coloring. He screamed again, so she screamed. This continued for our entire meal.

Baby Bop’s motto seems to be: “when in doubt, scream.”

We head into the exam room. A Disney movie is playing, there’s a stack of books, puzzles and a cash register. Baby Bop ditches us the minute we walk in. This is off to a better start than expected.

A mechanical dog pops out of a doghouse on the wall and starts yapping away. Baby Bop lets out a big laugh and all the while the doctor is examining her eyes. Then Baby Bop starts hacking. She hacks like an old man who’s got a golf ball of phlegm in his throat. The doctor looks concerned. I can’t believe I have to explain this. I tell her,

“She’s imitating our dog. He has an obsession with licking his feet, then gets hair in his throat and hacks it all up. So if you ask her what a dog says she hacks.”

“It sounds like your dog has a problem.”

Yes and now it sounds like my daughter does too.

I ask Baby Bop,

“What does a doggy say?” In the hopes that I can prove she knows that dogs say “woof” and Booker hacks. She looks at the mechanical yapping dog and lets out a throaty hack.

The doctor tells us,

“She’s getting glasses!”

In theory I’m all for it. The reality of it is perplexing. I ask the doctor,

“How do you get toddlers to keep them on?”

“Once a kid realizes that they see better with them than without them, they’ll often want to wear them. But that’s not the case with Baby Bop, because she sees fine with her right eye.”

Huh. She adds,

“It’s like how we always wear our clothes. We always wear our glasses.”

So we don’t always wear our clothes.

Baby Bop’s glasses should arrive this week. Stay tuned.