Occupational Therapy and new sunglasses

We finally, finally, finally received the sunglasses from RNIB which I ordered about a month ago. Heaven forbid she lose some and I ever need more at short notice. After I placed the order, a friend told me about some called Julbo which I thought I might keep in the back of my mind as a backup high street pair. Then she lost one pair of Baby Banz (threw them out of the pram), then Martin called me yesterday morning to say that she had thrown the second pair out of the pram on his way to the bus stop with her. He retraced his steps all the way home and didn't have them with him. So I raced online and ordered the Julbo ones: the RNIB ones hadn't arrived, she'd lost two pairs of Baby Banz in two weeks and we were down to the Beaba ones and Emily's toddler ones so I thought I'd better make it a priority. Then, in the mail appeared the RNIB ones and they were Julbo brand too! Then Amy told me that Charlotte had her pink Banz with her and Martin had found them but not told me. Oh well, the other Julbos arrive tomorrow and are 96% light blocking which is more than the RNIB ones. (Plus, they are a more girly colour!)

The RNIB ones have amber lenses. They certainly make everything look a bit strange. I guess it won't bother Charlotte because she doesn't have any colour vision anyway. They certainly increase contrast but they don't seem to increase anything beyond making lights lighter and darks darker. I don't see an improvement in detail. I haven't taken them outside and looked through them myself yet. They also don't fit very close to her face so she is not getting any light-blocking advantage there. I can see her eyes through the lenses so they probably aren't dark enough. I'll be interested to see how Charlotte reacts compared to the regular Julbo which are darker but with grey lenses. We are having our summer this week so we have really sunny days and she is a bit unhappy.

We had Occupational Therapy today and Charlotte is still on track. The OT's summary is that she doesn't think Charlotte's vision problems are holding her back developmentally. This is great news. We are going to see her again in October for ongoing monitoring but so far, so good. Yay!

I've also been reading some interesting things about genetic research this week. I read any reports about genetics with far more interest than I ever used to. This particular news report was referring to common ailments such as heart disease but the point that stuck out at me was the progress that has been made in the human genome project in the last 10 years. It is almost unfathomable and bodes well for equally impressive progress in the next 10 years.