3yrs to the date.....September 10, 2009

Day One of Preschool 2 August 27th 2012

Cullen and his favorite goggles - Summer 2012

Go Texans Day - Our interpretation - August 25, 2012

On this day 3 yrs ago, Cullen had his lip closure surgery performed by Dr. Samuel Stal (June 29th, 1950 - August 13th, 2012) at Texas Children's Hospital. Things have changed but the smile is still infectious.

As you can see, we have some sad news to report, Cullen's surgeon passed away last month.  He will be dearly missed.  Fortunately, we were able to visit with him earlier this year and he was excited about Cullen's progress.  He was very excited about his growth and the way the palate was forming, so much so that he believes that Cullen will be ready at the age of 4 for a palate extension.  Dr. Stal had always been impressed by Cullen's size and ability to heal, the kid still to this day will have to be asked if he hurt himself.  He has a very high pain tolerance which requires some getting use to.  He has been known to fall off of things and jump right back up to keep up with his brother, only later to find a bruise or bump on his noggin.  The surgery has not been scheduled and we will now play it by ear with Dr. Stal's passing.

Cullen has been attending speech at Hassler Elementary which is now his brother's Kindergarten school, we have been very fortunate to begin working with Heather, the Speech Pathologist since he turned 3.  She is amazing and since "she is Daddy's friend", actually she is just amazing, but I like to think I had something to do with it, Cullen has really taken to her.  We started at the beginning of the year and continued through the summer.  With the school year starting, she benchmarks against what he came in with in December and in August he "aced" his words, doing something like 75 of 85 sounds on the end of words and something along those lines for beginning sounds.  The problem that we all have is slowing him down enough to understand individual words since my son will someday be a color play-by-play sportscaster as he speaks non-stop about everything.   He will continue to need speech, but we are pretty sure "debate" skills are not going to be needed.  Cullen will argue pretty much every point and has some pretty good reasoning about "why" he doesn't need to do things, "Daddy doesn't do that" is usually one of his better ones. 

Cullen will be embarking on his first team sport this week, Soccer.  He has a group of friends that are all younger siblings that he has been playing with at every one of Brady's baseball game or soccer game.  They have all been itching to get on the field and wear a jersey, so tonight we went out and picked up his team uniforms.  So tonight's PJ's are a nice new gray and orange #3 Klein soccer club jersey.  He told me tonight that "I can't wait until Saturday for my first soccer game".  He has definitely put in his time with two seasons of tee ball and two seasons of soccer under his belt, that is watching his brother Brady play while he learned from the sidelines.  Commonly saying to my coaching, "I already know that."  Really, how?  "I practiced with Brady, don't you remember, we ran the bases after the game and I can kick a soccer ball into the net, we did that at halftime."  So I see.  Looking forward to coaching a bunch of siblings that "already" know the sport.

We filled our summers like most families with vacations that included the hottest trend "The Hotel Pool". Disneyland was a close second. Cullen was especially impressive with his ability to surprise us with his new found excitement for swimming.  The pool was a common place to find the family this summer with Brady becoming quite the swimmer, and Cullen doing the "Power Week" classes at FINS.  He took a two week class with Garrett, his instructor, and went from 0 to 60!  While the start was a little rocky, had to find the right goggles, right snacks on the way to FINS, right words of encouragement, right bribery of toys for finishing, and numerous other bluffs, it all was worth it. Cullen now has a nice set of (expensive) divers goggles that fit his nose and face, allowing him to see and breathe, Lightning McQueen fruit snacks, compliments like "Cullen you swim like Michael Phelps and look like Ryan Lochte" and the Tonka Car Carrier Truck from Target he picked out himself...we managed.  He now swims across the pool, puts his head underwater and uses "Big Arms" and kicks "like Brady!" so we spent many hours in the pool.   He showed off his skills in Grammy and Papa's pool, several Lazy rivers around Texas hotels and couple of other McGarr pools.  While this may sound like the poor kid was dragged by dad kicking and screaming, he was for 3 days, and then I will report, as all good Dad's do - in the end he didn't want to quit lessons with Garrett.  Driving by FINS, he can be heard saying "Daddy, when am I going back to swim lessons?" - always said with a smile.  Now the interesting part of the swim lessons, is that we stopped them because of his tubes about a year ago when they had to be replaced because of infection and since that go round he was not a big fan of his head underwater - so mission accomplished. 

Now you might ask what about Mommy, well that is now Cullen's favorite word...it has about 500 ways of being pronounced depending on the need...mommmmy -- when he is tired, mommY! -- when he needs something, mommyyyy - when he is looking for her for no reason , mmmmoooommmmmmmy - when he wants to tell her something and she is talking to anyone - sorta his way of saying "excuse me, mommy" all in one syllable.  However, I am happy to report that Brady has been an excellent teacher in this area and has encouraged this behavior to divert some of the "mommy never lets us out of the house and she is so mean!" from him to Cullen. Seriously, someone has to be the bad guy right, so mommmy is definitely doing well.  She is enjoying the fact that without looking she can be inundated with artwork, stories, and at least three to five questions before she gets in the back door from work, it is called "multitasking".    Cullen and Bec are definitely kindred souls, they both love the "OCEANNN!"  While Brady and I do enjoy sandcastles, the beach, a good game of crazy eight, Cullen and Bec can sit in the beach chairs and listen to the waves and watch the world go by...Bec more so than any of us.

Finally, I will leave you this evening with a picture from that day 3 yrs ago......and just a thank you to everyone who has made the above stories and fodder possible..especially you, Dr. Stal. Thank you.

Shay