Kate flunked her school eye exam last year and so we embarked on the fun adventure of having a miniature four-eyed bull in a china shop AKA a kid with glasses. We went to the local eye doctor to have her eyes checked and I'm not even sure she had a clue what she was supposed to be looking at because most of her answers about what she saw in the picture were said with her head tilted and her voice ending in a quizzical lilt (like when she answers every question in Sunday school with the word "Jesus?" because she figures that must be right).
Nonetheless, she was determined to be slightly farsighted with astigmatism in one eye. Beings she is covered by Medicaid for her vision care, I had a limited selection of glasses to pick from. I made the classic rookie mistake of picking something that looked halfway cute.

I should have instead looked for the pair that was titanium, double reinforced, kryptonite coated, flexible side stems, polycarbonate shrouded, and metal framed. I had no idea kids could be so destructive in such a short amount of time. We were less than 24 hours into our glasses wearing season when I got a call from the daycare provider that Kate had busted the stem trying to "clean" her glasses. I took a look at them, whipped out my Krazy Kat glue and glued them back together.
The glasses broke again the next day at preschool. This time, I called the eye doctor and they said there was a 90-day guarantee if the glasses were defective. I told them the glasses were not defective but my four-year-old certainly was! They told me Medicaid would replace the glasses but they required the original pair to be sent in and it would take about two months for a replacement. Yikes! I opted for packing tape instead.
So now Kate's class pictures coming home from preschool showed several smiling, normal looking kids and one wild-braided/beaded Baby Bird with a chunk of packing tape on the left stem. We went that way for several months until she finally busted out the lens and we couldn't locate it so I was forced to trudge back again to the eye doctor.
We were given a replacement pair and as it was towards the end of the school year, I decided she could go all summer long without glasses. School started up again in the fall and we dutifully started the glasses routine where she would put them on right before getting on the bus with instructions to take them off and set them on her desk before she went to P.E. or recess.
All was well until I got an email from her teacher that Kate was repeatedly cleaning her glasses with the class-shared wet wipes. Her teacher asked if that was okay. "NO!" I told her, "Tell Kate she is NOT to clean her glasses at school; I will clean them when she gets home.". "Okay," her teacher replied, "I wondered why my wet wipes were disappearing so fast and I think I may have found the culprit."
Well, if the smeared glasses fit...

Then, two weeks ago, I look in the bottom of Kate's book bag, among the spilled out popcorn and old Cheezits and find her glasses in two pieces. I asked her what happened. She says, "I broke them.". Yet again. So back to the eye doctor we will go only this time I am going to take my sister Mary's advice and see if they have any in a swim goggle variety! Forget cute...we are going for STAYING POWER!