God Bless Hannah Montana

Our girls have recently become obsessed with Hannah Montana. We watch her television show, we went to her concert, we’ve bought everything from wigs to T-shirts to singing dolls in her likeness, we hosted a Hannah Montana birthday party for our older daughter a few weeks ago, etc. I was quickly approaching HMO (Hannah Montana Overload) – until yesterday.

Now I view her as a gift from God.

Let me back up to December. That’s when we found out that our older daughter had failed the routine vision screening at her school. The nurse recommended that she be given a complete exam by an eye doctor, so we made an appointment for mid-January, the soonest we could get in. Meanwhile, I tried to prepare our daughter that she would probably need glasses – which didn’t go well. She cried for nearly an hour and was very upset about the thought of needing corrective eyewear. The llama drama was just beginning and it was going to be a long, painful process.

The eye doctor confirmed that she did, in fact, need glasses to wear for distance in the school classroom. However, her appointment was at the end of the day and the optical shop was already closed. So we decided – since it wasn’t an emergency situation – to wait a few weeks until my checkup with the eye doctor so she and I could pick out new frames together.

In the past few weeks, our daughter has periodically made remarks about getting glasses – none of them positive. One day she came in wearing mine, crying and saying she looked like a geek and she never wanted to wear glasses. I calmed her down and told her all the things mothers have told their daughters for generations: she is beautiful and nothing will ever change that, she could never look like a geek, she’ll be surprised at how much better she can see, and so on. It was almost working until our youngest llama entered the room with Mr. Potato Head.

“See?” she said excitedly to her older sister. “He wears glasses, too!”

This caused the older llama to burst into tears once again. The younger one’s show of compassion was well-intended and incredibly sweet, but let’s face it…Mr. Potato Head, with his garish, plastic yellow frames, is not exactly a style icon.

But Hannah Montana is.

I’m convinced that God smiled down on us and decided He’d give us a break on any additional drama on this issue – because the day before we were to go shop for glasses, I saw an ad in the newspaper for Wal-Mart. The retail giant is now the official Hannah Montana merchandise headquarters…and the optical department is now offering Hannah Montana frames. Hallelujah!

To make a long story longer, our daughter LOVED the frames because they’re Hannah Montana (do you need another reason?!?), and I think the small logo on the side will impress the kindergarten girls enough to prevent them from saying anything mean. The most important thing is that our little llama thinks they’re cool and is excited about wearing them.

We pick them up after school today and I’ll let you know if the llama drama returns for an encore performance. But I’m hopeful that with God and Hannah Montana on our side, we’ll at least have an extended intermission.