The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child

(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Hey folks!! I am reeling from a stressful and exhausting sleepless couple of days-and here I sit near dawn Rory and Ri are sleeping soundly, and I am awake.

It all started late Monday, when Lissy was over with Nickolai I noticed one of Rory's pupils looked MUCH larger than the other. I jumped to get the flashlight- both eyes responded ,to the light and didn't look soo different in the light- Lissy looked too and we both just figured it was a trick of light that it looked that way. I didn't think much of it- Tuesday she was fine and I didn't notice MUCH of a difference(though, looking back through pics of her in my last blog post it seems apparent)

Well,Early -EARLY Wednesday when she began to get tired she looked up at me(sitting under the light) I literally jumped, her pupils seemed shockingly unequal-her right eye had very little iris compared to the left.


She had no other problems or complaints said it felt fine, and went to sleep, I called mom- who pretty much told me yeah, call the ped.

A million questions running through my head,
Have her pupils always been uneven how could I possibly not notice?,
Trying to remember every time she bumped her head recently- and thinking I was a horrible mom for not knowing if she could have hurt her head that badly,
Wondering, could something really terrible be wrong??- and yes, googling such things is a BAD idea.
literally making myself sick thinking over possibilities.

I called the pediatricians answering service and they had a nurse call me back.
With no other symptoms- and the fact she had had the problem for a few days with no prob, she told me to just wait till they opened and make an appointment.
Plenty of people just have uneven pupils, and the big stuff you would usually see other symptoms or warning signs before that. I felt so frantic and overprotective.

They were super nice when I called to make an appointment, couldn't make an appointment for Wednesday, Ri had to work all day- and they didn't seem to think it needed to be a rushed appointment.
.. but that meant I spent the mostly sleepless day Wednesday obsessing stressing over it, digging through old pics to see if I could see it in baby pics, googling my fingers to the bone.

Rory though, was better than FINE and that made it much easier , she bounced off the walls like a human pinball, sang along with Charlie and the chocolate factory, ate everything I offered her-She even did some dishes for me, but mostly in hopes I would make her popcorn if she scrubbed the big bowl. It was sort of chilly so she only got a teeny bit of outside play in.

(see where those high winds the other day took out more of our fence?)


And I buzzed around her trying to get pics- but it really didn't seem as big a difference then as when she was tired.

Ri seemed sort of upset I scheduled Rory's appt for afternoon instead of morning, I figured that would be better with her schedule-horrid as her schedule may be...but it would sort of break up any plans of going out to the zoo or anything like we had been hoping to.

Another night of Rory up until dawn- when she crashed I was soo stressed I couldn't sleep- I fell asleep maybe an hour before the alarm buzzed at noon.
I was half tempted to have Ri take her without me, just hoping he could come home and tell me everything was fine. it really shouldn't have stressed me so bad. Rory is fine, and nothing seemed to bother her, but it freaked me out.
We got dressed and headed out(- Rory had on the cutest outfit, it was long sleeves though and when it got hotter I changed her before I could get a pic ) .

I packed the camera full of pics of it in case it didn't seem as bad when we went in,and all sorts of expectations to be treated like I was being overprotective and silly- and needing to demand a referral for a pediatric Ophthalmologist.

The nurse noticed it right away, asked a bunch of questions.The dr (not her reg dr ,but one Rory has seen before), looked at it a million different way- in all sorts of lighting.Asked MORE questions. Rory was really great - brave and sweet. We told her there would probably not be any shots or blood draws ,so she was all good with a dr visit.

DR really wasn't concerned, with no other symptoms and all- but before I could even ask for one she set up an appointment for an ophthalmologist to check it out.

Her appt is April 24, which is a Friday afternoon, No idea how we will swing that with Ri's schedule , and sort of irritated we have to wait that long, but I am so freaking relieved by the check up-and that the dr didn't see any other problems that would warrant a rush to a specialist- , I can't even explain how much better I feel.
I am really trying to think positive thoughts, now- and not stress about it anymore. The other night I probably checked on Rory in her sleep as much as I did when she was a newborn.

Yesterday, Rory got an Easter Card from Momo, it sings "this little light of mine" , and had money inside. Momo always has the best timing. The money allowed us to let Rory pick something out as a reward her for being so good at the dr. ..She picked a small littlestpetshop playset- and streamers for her bike.She also droolled over a couple of other toys, and sporting goods she decided she will get "next time".
We got a few other basics, stopped at some produce stands
- Rory went mad giggly in the 1st one, and begged for all sorts of healthy things, which of course we had to get her..
and made our way home.

With all the Easter garb everywhere, and the card she is all about Easter now.. weird cause I can't say I have told her much about it, we only sort of vaguely celebrated an Easter/Ostra crash holiday with my folks the last few years.I never had plans of doing Easter baskets or eggs or any of that. ..darn kid. Now she wants to dye eggs and all.

- I was half out of it on the couch when Ri asks if I wanted to go on a nature walk.(our community is like more nature preserve than town).
Do I want to go on a nature walk "...sure.Not really, but sure". We needed to get out of the house and get some sort of exercise,and to take Noobs somewhere...
Though, sleep sounded like a much better idea.

So yeah, a nature walk.
We decided to go to mud springs, -stopping 1st to pick up the powerful bugspreay we would need to survive the hike there.

Rory was inseparable from her bag of roasted peanuts she got at the produce stand.
She carried it down the trail hoping to find an Elephant to share it with, ignoring our comments about Florida not usually being the natural habitat of elephants, and that it would be highly unlikely to find them in the woods here.


The trees looked HUGE..well ,for east coast trees.





Rory had to check out the fish.She loves fish, in fact She recently realized people eat fish, and of all animals she knows people eat she is the MOST disturbed that someone would eat cute beautiful swimming fishes. lol

When we got to the spring there was another family there with little boys , the boys were throwing seed pods into the water yelling "get back fire ball!" - Rory HAD to join their game. It entertained her ,the boys were adorable and very sweet , it was trouble getting her to leave after that.
Ri let Noobie go for a little bit of a swim.


We raced back,LONG trail- I ended up carrying Rory much of the way back, along with the back pack I was carrying.She was soooo cute singing this song she made up- I wish I would have got it on video. ..but then she started wearing out.
We tried all sorts of games and tricks to get overtired nocturnachild to find the energy to walk the trail back.
-yelling "ECHO",racing, skipping to "lions and tigers and bears- Oh my" ..but yeah we mostly just ended up carrying her.
We tried to stuff Noobie in the back and head to a near by tower bird observatory--Noobie didn't like that idea
LOL I think she got stuck.



We ate peanuts and watch a few birds. Then called mom and told her we would stop by for just a sec, because we were right near her house.
I knew Rory had to pee and also wanted to tell them about her dr apt.We chatted for a little while, Rory sucked a bunch of candy out of them. Thinking about going over there "easter"(or some jesusfree spring holiday celebration like is)-since Rory is so adamant she does something...and I don't really want to plan anything.

I guess I need to call Ri's Mom tomorrow and make sure she doesn't have plans - to know for sure.
Ri was starving , and Mom and dad were leaving to go to Porky's so we headed out. Ri decided to pick up pizza from a new place on the way home. Rory and I napped in the car with Noobs while he ordered,and sat on their deck on the lake.

She was fussy when we got home, but she didn't go back to sleep- just played with her new pets and ate everything in sight. The pizza was AWESOME. They had a lot of nice veg selections on their menu too ,we will be going back there , for sure. :)

Well, this post was FAR longer than I expected, My lap is getting all hot up from this thing, and I should realllly be making my way towards sleep if I want to survive tomorrow.
PEACE AND TOFU CHICkEN GREASE,
BABYHELLFIRE