Questions, Questions, Questions

So, now we are home. We came back from Utah and had a very pleasant 9-hour drive with the children (I realize how impossible that sounds, but it's true - it really is). We didn't have the heart to patch Abby during that long drive, since we had planned on showing movies to the kids. Television-watching is still so difficult for her. She finds it hard to see the images, and even though my in-laws have a 60-inch giant screen TV, she had to sit about six inches from the screen to see the images.

It's been interesting to be back in our familiar environment - back to swimming lessons, back to our regular grocery store and our regular lives. One of the most difficult things has been all the questions people will ask us while we are out. When we were away, we didn't routinely run into people we know, and strangers (for the most part) were too polite to ask about the patch. Now that we are home, that has all changed.

Though I had forewarned the swimming school, when we arrived for the first time with the patch on the receptionist and lifeguard both asked Abby, "What happened?" Most people seem to thing it's some sort of accident. When we went to the grocery store the clerks asked her, "Did you get an owie on your eye?" I was completely unprepared for this and so had not given Abby any tools for how to deal with it. The first few times, she would run and hide her face behind my legs, or cover her face with her eyes and start crying. I finally came up with two standard answers that she is free to choose from if people ask:

1. I have a lazy eye (too hard to teach her to say "amblyopia"). I have to wear this patch to make my eye stronger, or

2. I don't feel like talking about it right now.

More often than not, when strangers ask, she chooses option 2. To her friends, she will usually give answer #1.