He has my eyes

One of the things I like about Hyrum is that he has my eyes. Don't get me wrong, I would like it if he had Joy's eyes too. But since I have an easier time acknowledging my son's good looks than I do in thinking there is anything worthy of approval in my own looks, seeing my eyes reflecting from his handsome face gives me a little hope for me too.

Unfortunately, with the eyes comes the pink. I wouldn't say I regularly had pink eye as a child, but it was a frequent enough visitor that I know it when I see it. Hy is having his first bout with it, thankfully nowhere near as severe as what I had a few weeks ago. Little water, little discharge, little staying home from church, little glad there's no school tomorrow for him to miss, very little sleep as he pops into the bedroom several times a night to ask Mommy for help... good times. He's started asking for me to wash his eyes. We got a system going briefly that he liked, and when I did it differently the next time he said, "Daddy, you're not doing it right." I explained a bit further what it is we need to do, got him on board, and now we're working together much happier. I so have to keep trying to convince him to not stick his fingers in my eyes, though.

He also has a mild fever (100.6).

Meanwhile, I think I'm slowly passing another kidney stone, so it's time to be on Vicodin while moving boxes, mowing lawns, and trying to proof-read my textbook for the last time before publishing. For once, I was just as happy to spend church today lying down on the couch with him.

I've never been able to keep him laying down for as long as we just managed. We took turns watching half an hour of Prince of Egypt and Backyardigans. Each time we returned to PoE, he asked to start over and "see the horses going down." After the intro, teenage Moses and Ramses race each other in two-horse chariots. They nearly get themselves killed several times as people get out of the way, they jump gaps, and scaffolding crashes down around them. They pause the horses briefly at a barricade which suddenly collapses and they ride their horses down a tidal wave of sand in a scene highly reminiscent of going down a tall roller coaster. Pretty fun, but not the point, so I said no.

As we went along, I explained some of the parts of Moses' story from the Bible to be a bit more accurate than the film. He asked some pretty tough questions about why God sent curses and he correctly remembered and linked up the Passover with the Sacrament (score!). I was pretty pleased.

He told me several times that the movie was scary, but we made it through. It wasn't too scary, I guess. He and I had tried watching it last year, but it was too scary then. (I should note, he chose it from among the options I gave him.)

Afterwards, I asked him what was the scariest part. Imagine my surprise when he answered -- not the darkness, not the plagues, not the deaths, not the scary music -- "The horses. They go down WHOOSH. They go fast. Why did they go so fast, Daddy? Why did the horses go faster?"

I then asked him what his favorite part was. "The horses."

You liked the horses?
"Yes. They go fast."

I think I'm going to have a very interesting conversation with my Lovely and Gracious when she gets home....

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Hy-guy also apparently needs glasses. The school's best guess is that he has about 20/100 vision. We took him to an eye doctor for children in the area who demonstrated that he can read the top line of the eye chart, but nothing lower. We'll have to wait until the pink eye gets cleared up, though, to give him further testing to see just what kind of glasses. Happily, children who need glasses are a medical condition, while adults who need glasses need a separate vision insurance, so our insurance will cover his glasses if not mine.