Marleigh's special dot

When Marleigh was 4 months old, she developed a little spot under her chin. I remember it so vividly because it was right at the same time that she started eating cereal and it was that same khaki color that the cereal was. I was wiping her face one day and thought it was a spot of cereal but it didn't come off.

Over the next several months the spot grew larger and started to get darker. I'm not sure how long it was before it was the way it is now. But it currently is a large (nearly dime size) dark brown raised area. The kind of big mole that old ladies have with long black wiry hairs growing out of it.

As a little bitty girl, Marleigh referred to what we decided was a birthmark (although it wasn't there at birth) as her "special dot". I've always viewed it sort of like Cindy Crawfords mole. It's an area on Marleigh's chin that makes her, well... her. I actually think it is special. No one else has one. Just her.

But she's going into middle school this year and she's self conscious of this special dot that she now refers to as "the mole". She's told me that kids at school call her Marleigh Moley or Moley Mammoth. Why are kids so mean? I want to go beat those mean kids up.

So today we're traveling to Tulsa to have her special dot removed. I'm having my plastic surgeon do it. He doesn't normally do mole removals but since I've been such a faithful patient (not quite as faithful as Michael Jackson is to his surgeon) he is going to do it. I'm hoping she doesn't scar like I do. I'm hoping that instead of the mole she'll have what will eventually be a small little incision line that isn't noticed unless she points it out.

Another change. The end of the special dot.