Sunday With Doodle

Hopefully, it's been fairly obvious as I've been writing here that I love my kids. They're often hilarious, always interesting and occasionally infuriating. Doodle lately has been daddy's boy lately, so he's been needing some time to be with me. We thought that this weekend would be a good time for the two of us to get out on our own and see a movie, especially with the way that he's been talking so constantly about Wall-E. I figured that we'd get home from church, eat a quick lunch, put Squeaker (and Anne, to be honest) down for a nap and head off, just us boys, for the movie. As many things seem to go in my life lately, none of this went according to plan.

We arrived home from church, as planned, but Doodle was a bit frustrated about something which, honestly, is immaterial at this point. I had to physically lift him in to the house from the garage because he wasn't coming in. This only served to frustrate him even more. Before moving on, it 's worth mentioning that since he was a little past two years old, Doodle has worn glasses due to being severely far-sighted. He's been fantastic with his glasses for the most part, diligently wearing them every day and usually being careful with them so they don't break. Anyway, after lifting him in the house, I turned away and hear Punkin gasp. I turned back around and saw that Doodle had taken his glasses off his face and snapped them in half. Needless to say, he got a bit of a chewing out for that along with some time in timeout.

Then, of course, came the inevitable conversation between Anne and myself which could essentially be boiled down to answering the question "What now?" It was finally decided that we should head to a local eye wear establishment since they could get him new glasses today. You see, when hes' not wearing his glasses, one of his eyes severely cross in. In fact, this was how we first discovered that he needed glasses. At first we just thought he was being goofy after having discovered that he could cross his eyes. We never guessed at the time that his eye was crossing because the muscles were straining so hard to allow his eyes to focus on whatever he was trying to look at. Quite honestly, when he's not wearing his glasses, it pains me to see his eye cross like that.

We knew that heading out for this sort of shopping experience could get a little bit (dramatic pause) interesting. For one thing, we were scheduled to go to some friends' house for supper, which would come up quickly since we had to essentially cross town almost twice in the allotted time. Added to this is the fact that Squeaker hadn't had a nap that day yet. Both Squeaker and Punkin would essentially have to stand around while we focused our attention on Doodle with him trying on pair after pair of glasses. The solution, as it often is, was the promise of candy.

So, after much trying on of glasses and debate back and forth, we settled on a pair of glasses for the young man. They said that the glasses would be done in about an hour. Since it was then nearly three, we figured they'd be done a bit before four, which would have been just enough time to get home, gather the necessary things for supper. No problem. We went to a couple of other stores, looking for things that we might need for a potential camping trip in the near future and then went back to the eyeglasses store a few minutes before the assumed time of delivery.

Just Doodle and I went in to the mall to retrieve the glasses. Him because they probably wanted to check the fit of the new glasses on him and me because the last time we let Doodle go around the mall on his own, he came out with a bunch of stuff that we really didn't need. He is, after all, only three.

We got in the store and they went in back to check on his glasses. We were told that they had to "resurface one of the lenses," so it'd be another 15 minutes. I called Anne and delivered the bad news. "Just hurry," was the response.

While we were waiting, Doodle decided to take advantage of the time to talk a bit. He wanted to play a game called "What's Your Favorite..." in which he asks a question about a person's preferences. Each player takes turns answering the question. We talked about favorite superheroes, books, songs, and colors. We talked almost the entire time that we were waiting for his glasses to be done. The glasses ended up taking a half hour longer than originally anticipated instead of the fifteen minutes that we were told when we first got back. By the time we got back to the van, Squeaker was in nearly complete meltdown and Anne was quickly reaching wits end. We were late for our supper appointment.

Despite all of this, I really enjoyed that half hour that I got to spend with Doodle just talking about what he likes. He's the middle child and can often get lost in the shuffle, but when he's able to have the individual attention, he really seems to blossom. He's a pretty cool kid. When he's not destroying his eye wear, of course.