Columbus Ohio Family, Baby, and Senior Portrait Photographer | Cathy Blackstone Photography » Cathy Blackstone is a Columbus photographer specializing in family, baby, child, maternity and senior portrait photography

a trip to Disney for me and the girls (heehee)

countertops and a deep kitchen sink

go out to eat twice a week all year

FOR THE PRICE OF HER VISION THERAPY starting on Monday

but if Brynn can read words like sparkle and rhinestone or better yet one, two, who, what – it will be worth every single cent. EVERY SINGLE CENT.

I can’t even tell you the drama we’ve been through the last two years with “sight words”. I want to kill sight words. I want to burn flash cards. Burn. I can’t tell you how hard we have worked. I can’t tell you how the teacher in me has come out and tried everything. I can’t tell you how many times she has started crying and I have gotten mad and said horrible things out of the deepest rawest frustration. Imagine working with your child over and over and over and over again on letters or words. Then five minutes later they TOTALLY forget “the” or “and” or better yet “B”. Brynn can read a book 10 times…”It is a bird”, “It is a cat”, “It is a dog” …..last page….”What is it”? and have NO IDEA what the words “it” and “is” are – that she just read 48 times. It makes her frustrated and me demonic. She wouldn’t even know the word “two” right now – a word she has seen 500 times since preschool.

SO – I take her to “the best” optometrist. She started the testing process and as soon as they figured out she needed glasses it was stopped. So we get her glasses for her slight astigmatism. Within 2 weeks she knew her letters. THIS IS AFTER A SOLID YEAR OF FLASH CARDS. I was seriously doing a Pentecostal poisonous snake charmer dance at the alter. Like cried the ugly cry. Went to Graeters. HUGE celebration and guess what she said…”Does this mean I don’t have a disabled anymore?” (meant to say disability). I wanted to die. Deepest knife in my heart event ever.

We finished her testing process. 2 hours. Hello. And find out she has the “visual memory” of less than a four year old.

But she was learning her letters and doing better so I figured the best optometrist in Westerville couldn’t possibly know what she was talking about. Plus when I found out how much dinero (about passed out) this “vision therapy”  was going to cost I figured they just wanted our money. I left there thinking they were loser idiot thieves. This is also known as burying my head in the sand, not facing the facts, needing to process scary information and putting it on the backburner.

Then. Last week. Her darling teacher calls that I have known since she was in middle school. My best friend was HER teacher and her sister does our hair (do you hear the Close Encounters music in the background?). A teacher that LOVES Brynn. A teacher that loses sleep over Brynn. The kind of teacher that is truly one of a kind and a blessing. There is no other word. She is a true blessing. So she calls to break it down for me. Brynn hasn’t progressed in 9 weeks. Then I went a little blank but still heard words like “significantly delayed”.  The word “significant” did it for me.

So within 5 seconds of getting off the phone with Brynn’s teacher I am calling and scheduling Brynn’s vision voodoo therapy appointments because I can’t possibly imagine what they are going to do to make her read. But after googling for hours and talking to people I trust about it here we go…….wish us luck, say a prayer, pet a snake. BIG TIME.

to be continued…….