November 2010

Korben Gets Glasses

November started with a letter from the school saying that Korben had failed his eye exam. We were instructed to have an eye appointment done. I can't say that I was surprised since my eyesight is so horrible, but I was surprised at how bad his prescription actually was. I was very impressed with the eye doctor and it was neat to see how they conduct an eye exam for someone so young that can't answer the "that's better, that's worse" questions.

We were also impressed that it only took 2 days to get his glasses in even with his nearsightedness and astigmatism. His glasses are adorable on him as you can see:

A few things we have noticed since he got glasses: 1) Immediately after we picked the glasses up he looked at the ground and said, "Mommy the road is broken." I looked down and sure enough, the road had a lot of little cracks in it. I couldn't believe he had never seen things like that. 2) We can't remember a time when Korben has been able to see a plane in the sky. When we would point to one, he would just look around with really no idea of where the plane actually was. We have been attributing this to autism, but a few days after he got glasses we were laying on the trampoline and a plane flew by. He pointed directly at it and said, "Look Mommy, it's a plane!" It made us wonder what else we have been counting as an autistic trait that may not be. 3) We soon noticed another change: Korben has rarely been able to get something for us when we point to it from across the room, but since getting glasses he has been able to get anything we have pointed at. So, not an autistic trait, just a result of poor eyesight. Playing in the Leaves A November in Washington consists of LOTS of rain, and BEAUTIFUL greenery. Something it doesn't consist of are a lot of leaves on the ground (at least where we lived). So when all the trees around our house started losing their leaves, our boys thought it was about the best thing in the world. They would go out daily with the neighbor kids to gather the leaves in a pile and then swiftly destroy that pile. This lasted until I got worried about huge mounds of leaves being buried under snow and bagged it all. It was all sorts of fun while it lasted though. Mike's Job Mid-November, Mike & I were shocked when he was laid off from work. It was very unexpected, but we were given a good severance and are positive that new work will come our way. In a lot of ways it has been a blessing. Mike has gotten to spend some great quality time with the boys - so much that I think they will be devastated when he does find work. It is also nice that he isn't in the salesman atmosphere anymore. He doesn't miss that aspect of his work at all, and as a result is looking more toward the IT jobs rather than the management jobs. Thanksgiving Our holiday was wonderful. We spent the actual day with Mom & Dad Harrison and had a wonderful meal. Then we had a Fullmer family gathering at our house with Mom & Dad, Jake & Jess, Kara and Joe & Lucia. Jake brought his XBox Kinect and we all got quite the workout. We had another fantastic meal, played lots of games and laughed a lot. The kids got to play outside because the weather was great, which was wonderful since that night we got dumped on. Tidbits In November Korben started being very adamant that he hold the sacrament tray when it was passed to him. Even if we were on a side row, he would need to have his turn "passing" the tray back to either Mike or I. One Sunday I tried to just hold it for him while he got his bread and he exclaimed, "Mommy, I can do it myself!" Just the beginning of many "Do it myself comments".