First of all, great post Lil! I absolutely loved the moment when he announced his black belt. I'm very glad you and your daughter were able to get out of that situation safely.

I was born with a cleft palette, and I was supposed to be born with a cleft lip. When I was born there was a hairline scar running from my nose to my lip. It turns out that my cleft lip was healed in utero, this is extremely rare. I can only imagine that had I been born with a cleft lip my life would've been very different. Also had the surgeons not been able to repair my cleft palate, my life would've been vastly different -imagine having no barrier between your mouth and nasal passage. It turns out that I was very lucky to have been born at the University of Michigan and had some very capable surgeons repair my palate. It took a series of 3 major surgeries between the age of 2-3.5, grafting skin from the back of my throat to the roof of my mouth. Some of my earliest memories are of being in the hospital. So, I'm not sure that it qualifies as a miracle to have been born with only a hairline scar instead of a major gap on my face… But I feel pretty damned fortunate, if nothing else for the doctors that had the faculty to repair me.

But the real miracle came when this little girl was born, and the first thing I did was look at the roof of her mouth and thankfully… It was intact :-)

She does, however, have a major problem with facial hair.