We're not alone....

Sorry about the blogging slump. It's not even my fault. Our monitor has quit working on our home computer. After about a week of me thinking it'd fix itself.....I've resorted back to the laptop. Which really isn't even all that ancient. We bought it in 07. It wasn't the MOST inexpensive one available at the time....but close. It's out of memory. Every time we turn it on it gives us these alerts that if we don't shut it down then things could be lost. I'm sure there's a simple solution. We've deleted lots of files. It's still at about 80% now. My ipod has more memory than this thing. But....it DOES work. Just slower. A lot slower. Anyway 2 weeks ago something awesome happened. My Grandma Willis has been staying at my mom and dad's for the past few months. And she told me something, that I'd heard before....but for some reason I'd always brushed it out of my mind. Too distant. Not really relevant to US. Let me explain. I guess Grandpa Willis has a sister with 2 out of 7 (I think it's seven....could be wrong there) children that have chronically missing teeth and thin and wispy hair like my children. Well....of course they're much older now. One is a boy and one is a girl. The girl's name is Jenny. And I got to talk to her on the phone. It turns out Ectodermal Dysplasia DOES run in my family. It's on the WILLIS side. Why it's exhibited in MY children and nobody else's I may never know. But Jenny had struggles as a child. Her front teeth were tiny and pointy (very much like Angie's). She's missing about 8 teeth. Pretty good actually. My son has LESS than 8 TOTAL. And who knows how many Angie has. And her brother (sorry I can't remember his name....starts with a "W") has NO teeth on the bottom. Wow. And both of them had hair that looks JUST like my kids when they were young. Now Caleb's hair is starting to get thicker as he gets older. But.....when he was Angie's age, it looked exactly the same as hers. Here's what fascinated me the most. She had NEVER heard of Ectodermal Dysplasia. And so I had the opportunity to tell her about it, and I gave her the website, and told her about the international registry. I think she was surprised to finally have an family explanation for why she and her brother were just a little bit different. Anyway. Talking to her made me feel really good. It's nice to know that what my children are going through isn't COMPLETELY random. Will my children's children have ED? I don't know. Hers don't. She has 3 kids and her brother has five. Crazy. Anyway. I'm making a little change to this blog. In the left column, I'm creating an area with links to all of my previous posts about ED. (If I can find them all....I only have 3 years of archives to go through).