From Harry Potter to Clark Kent

The boys got new glasses last week.

Our two biggest boys have had glasses for a really long time. I had to go back and check to see, and it looks like they both got them in 2008 although Edo’s first photos of him in glasses show up around January of ’08 and Pudah’s don’t show up until September of ’08. I have no idea how I managed that one, since you would think they had eye exams at the same time. But maybe they didn’t. I honestly have barely any recollection of that year. It was our first deployment and to say I was in “survival mode” would be a serious understatement. I remember Dean leaving and Dean coming home, and somehow keeping us all alive and fed in the interim. So, we will just say it was a success and move on.

Regardless, they both got glasses somehow and boy were they ever adorable:

Edo, January 2008
(At Fernbank in Atlanta. We used to take Daddy Doll everywhere and take silly photos of him to share with Daddy later so he could feel like he had been places with us. Bug put him in the underwear drawer at Victoria’s Secret once and he was lost for over an hour. I’m sure he didn’t mind that!)

Pudah, September 2008

Being just the right age at the right time, Edo had a lot of people telling him he looked like Harry Potter when he first got his glasses, and this carried on for the next few years. Both boys had a similar type of wire rimmed glasses each time they chose new frames. I thought they looked really good, and they liked being called Harry Potter, and we just went with it.

Recently we went to the eye doctor for an annual eye exam. Pudah’s prescription had changed quite a bit, but Edo’s had remained the same. However, the fact that he has grown at least 5 inches in the last year and his face has changed quite a bit meant that the “child sized” glasses he was still wearing were beginning to look a bit small for his face. (This, and the fact that both boy’s frames were in various stages of “broken-ness”, bent ear pieces and missing nose pieces  and if you’ll notice they don’t sit straight on their faces etc. They had outlived their natural lifespan, lets put it that way.) And so we decided to it was time for new frames once again.

So, here is one last photo of the boys in their old frames, a la Harry Potter Style:

I ended up taking all 5 kids out to lunch that afternoon, by myself, and then to the glasses store. I’m pretty sure when we walked in the store manager nearly had a heart attack at the thought of all those little people roaming about his store, but they were really good about keeping their hands off the frames (Except for Baby Man, but he was too short to really reach much anyways).

Bug, however, decided it was time to put on quite a production and she begged and pleaded and cried on and off the entire time about how unfair it was that she didn’t get glasses and PLEASE would I just buy her some pretty purple frames to play with so she could have glasses too. It was kind of silly. She didn’t seem to understand why buying $100 purple frames as a toy was a bad idea. The lady helping us said usually the problem is reversed…kids are begging their parents NOT to make them wear glasses! She had never witnessed a scene quite like this before! Vi occasionally would join in and ask for a pair as well, but then she sat and played on my phone when she realized I wasn’t giving in. Bug kept it up, even AFTER we left the store.

The boys chose their new frames in about 30 minutes, and they said we could come back for them in two hours.

So we did.

The result was a pretty dramatic transformation. From Harry Potter to Clark Kent Jr.

(He really isn’t a disgruntled teenager, he was thrilled with the new glasses! He just hates having his picture taken.)

You know, in case I needed a literal every-day reminder that they are growing up from young boys in to young men. Far, far too quickly.

Still, I think our Clark Kents are pretty dang adorable.

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