Getting New Glasses

Abby - at eight years old - is a bit of a fashion plate. She doesn't care about labels (except Twinkle Toes, and that's content, not the label itself; she'd be happy with a knockoff). But if it were up to her she'd dress in pink and purple and sparkly, full stop. In fact, when I was pregnant with Lizzy, Abby felt we should name her "Magic Pink Purple Princess Rainbow Makeup Sparkle" (or something close to that; I may have the order mixed up). At that time she was four and a half. Her tastes have broadened but not changed a whole lot.

She is now allowed to choose her own school clothes, with three caveats:

1. They have to be within the stated budget
2. They have to meet school dress code (fingertip length skirts, two-finger-width straps, no profanity, etc.)
3. Parents always have veto power

So I figured we'd do the same with her new glasses frames, although only rules one and three would likely apply; how often does one find children's prescription eyeglasses with bad words on them, after all?

I did not expect the process to take two hours.

First she made several "piles". These were tacitly labeled "Definitely Not", "Probably Not", "Maybe Not", "Maybe", "Probably" and "Double-Probably". Then she tried on every kids' frame in the store, as well as two or three of the smaller adult women's frames. Three went into "Definitely Not" and the rest got scooped up to try again from the beginning, using the process of elimination. When we were (finally) down to five or six pair, she started asking me and the optician our opinions, pro and con (she called them "good and bad") for each pair.

This got us down to three pairs - one with metallic blue rectangular frames that were a bit small so we'd have to order them (my favorite), one with pink-metallic oval frames with "JUICY" written in hearts on each earpiece, and one with purple earpieces with tiny rhinestones, shading to lighter lavender rounded-rectangle frames. With the optician's silent collusion, she was talked out of the JUICY ones without outright veto on my part. The blue ones (my favorite) were discontinued and none of the ones left were Abby's size. Which left us with the purple-rhinestone (a lot less garish than they sound).

As soon as they come in - 7 to 10 business days - we'll get pictures and post them.