Baby mullets, singing and golf

So first things first... Cullen officially has a baby mullet. It is sorta cute in a retro sort of way, but the two tone hair really puts it over the top. Cullen was born with dark brown hair which has mostly been replaced with blonde hair everywhere except for the nape of his neck. Brady's hairline followed this same pattern so we hope that the baby mullet stage is exactly that- a stage- and he will ultimately have a cute little blonde head of hair. 

Brady stunned us tonight by looking me straight in the eye while we were playing play-doh and signing 'God Bless America.' Seriously, right out of the blue he breaks into song and sings it perfectly. Then he goes inside, sets up his golf tee, puts a ball on the tee, grabs a club and smacks the ball from our living straight to the front door! Unbelievable. What a cutie.

The other big news today is that Cullen's Latham device...aka. his 'grill' or 'bling'... was officially activated today. The activation process was quite dramatic. And when I say dramatic I mean it entailed a cheap, small, flathead screwdriver and took about 5 minutes. We reached into his mouth and turned the screw two clicks. The doc did one click, then I did the other while Shay held his head. Not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. Cullen didn't even blink. Just looked at me a little funny as I stared intently into his mouth. The Dr said I will need to turn the screw twice a day for the next week then we will see from there. Next week they will activate the rubber chains that will pull his gums back into alignment. The Dr. was quite pleased with his eating (he is back to normal, the little chunk!) and said that he would probably need to stay on tylenol and continue to wear his arm restraints through the weekend. All in all, a very positive visit.  

Once again we ran into someone who was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate. A beautiful girl of about 7 years old. I could hardly tell that she had had the surgeries. She was so proud of her face, it was really touching. Her mother showed us a picture of what she looked like as a baby- essentially she looked just like Cullen. It is really amazing how friendly everyone is at TCH. Shay and I commented that we will have to make sure that we go out of our way to make others feel at ease as so many people have done for us. 

Once again, I am off to bed to hopefully catch up on some zzzzzs. 

-r