S is our daughter. I call her, "poodle." And I don't know why you should care. It's my blog, dummy!

D is her father, my husband. Who may or may not be contributing to this blog, who knows. He is occasionally hilarious and insightful, so I hope he does!

ANYWAY. S is a completely normal baby who happens to have two rare facial clefts, one on each side of her face. One cleft has caused a huge hole in her left cheek, from her lip to lower eyelid, and the malformation of her left eye. The other cleft pulls up the right side of her upper lip to make it look as if she's perpetually, crookedly smiling at you and has resulted in a frankly fabulous small tear drop shaped cleft on her lower eyelid that I will miss. Both clefts have wreaked absolute havoc on her palate.

She will face problems with virtually every part and every function of her face. She has six doctors and counting. She will have approximately one zillion surgeries. The goal of this blog is to keep everyone who cares about her up-to-date about the goings on.

Because of my job, I am not allowed to have political opinions on the Internet. This might disappoint some of you who know me because sometimes those opinions may be amusing. For the vast majority of the rest of you, you won't have to worry about dredging through the latest outrage to get to the outcome of S's most recent appointment. Huzzah!

D thinks comment sections are just troll-bait, but I think only three people will read this and they will all be nice. So, comment away for the time being! I would sincerely love to hear from almost any of you about almost any thoughts you'd like to share. Random 8th grade acquaintance? 3rd cousin twice removed? Friend of friend of friend? Michelle Obama? LENTIL?!?! Drop by, say hi, don't feel weird about reading this. I understand that the Internet is for stalking.