As much as we love showing off our Jobson colleagues clad in their favorite eyewear, every so often we change things up and welcome in those outside the optical realm. For the first time ever and coinciding with our kids’ eyewear theme, this month we’re putting these two cute-as-heck kids under the Eye Nominate spotlight.

Six-year-old Brooks loves playing sports, Legos and rooting for his favorite team, the Washington Nationals. Brooks has been rockin’ sunglasses all his life—his mom Jane has been “conditioning” Brooks to wear sunglasses since he was a baby, starting with Baby Banz frames. “I take eye protection very seriously, especially because we travel a lot to high altitude areas where the sun is very strong year-round.” Because Jane started him so young, Brooks has always been receptive to wearing his suns when he’s out and about. Jane believes a great way to motivate kids to wear sunglasses is to let them pick out a pair themselves. Brooks loves sunglasses so much, he even owns multiple pairs. Here he sports a cool blue pair from L.L. Bean, but he also has aviators from the Gap, Spiderman sunglasses and another L.L. Bean pair with a shark motif currently in his rotation. With a savvy arsenal of sunwear like this, Brooks can hang with the 20/20 crew ANY day.

Four-year-old Owen loves steam trains and possesses an astounding knowledge of these locomotives. He enjoys going to the zoo and helping his mom Wendy with gardening (when he’s not picking and eating all the ripe raspberries he can get his hands on!). “O” spends a lot of time outdoors so Wendy is very attentive to his sun protection needs. Like Jane, Wendy also believes parents should start their kids in sunwear as early as they can. In addition to sunglasses, she also makes sure he wears sunblock and a UPF protection hat. O loves his sunglasses but initially it was challenging to get him to keep them on his face. It became much easier as he got older but Wendy sometimes still needs to remind him not to take them off. “I think the problem with sunglasses for kids is that there is only a short period of time that a pair will fit perfectly, otherwise they are either too big or too small. Kids are less likely to wear them willingly and without removing them unless the frames don’t pinch their heads and they don’t fall off when he or she looks down.” To counter this problem and to avoid losing the frame, Wendy recently bought a strap to attach to Owen’s sunglasses. O’s got style and sass here in his matte gray Julbo sunglasses, a gift from our own Gloria Nicola. Paired with a white cable-knit sweater and khakis, and that mop-top of hair, O serves up some sporty prep with a side of rock ’n’ roll.

Both Brooks and Owen get top votes in OUR book for the coolest kids in sunwear (and kudos to their sun-smart moms). Perhaps we’re a little biased because they also happen to be close to this editor’s heart (Owen is her nephew and Brooks is her best friend’s son), but a little favoritism goes a long way to drive home the message we incessantly push when it comes to the little ones: Every. Kid. Needs. SUNGLASSES.

—Christine Yeh