“Remember when we used to wonder what he was thinking?”
I make this joke all the time, these days. I make it so much it’s not funny anymore. Maybe it never really was and my friends and family have just been humoring me. That’s ok. I think I’ve earned it.
These days, our home is louder. Much louder. Sometimes, even, higher pitched. Lively, yes. Chaotic, you bet. I mean it when I say there is no silence. Because one of us is no longer silent. One of us has a voice and thoughts and ideas and needs. He’s always had these things, of course. But now he’s not afraid to use them. Share them. Explode with them.
These days he and I have conversations in the car on the way home from camp drop off. These days he tells us about his day during dinner and shares what he is thankful for at bedtime. These days I answer the most impossible of questions (Why is it raining? Why do cars not fly in the air? Why can’t I eat cookies all day long?) and find myself in the most impossible of arguments. These days people look at me with eyes as big as saucers when he opens his mouth. These days I hear a lot of, “I can’t believe how much he’s talking!”
These days are the days I spent last year wondering if I’d ever see. Or hear, as the case may be.
And I should be clear that these days still aren’t perfect. Obviously. These days I don’t always understand what he’s saying. These days I breathe deep for patience while he struggles to get his words out as we’re late on our way out the door. These days I get flustered by his frantic need to say all the words. The way he fumbles and sometimes screeches. These days conversations with him sometimes leave me feeling like I just got off a merry-go-round gone wild. He is so excited to use his words that sometimes he hurls them on top of everyone else’s and my brain can’t take the overwhelm of inputs (and certain big sisters can’t take the way attention sometimes splinters). These days he does fight with his sister for air time and there isn’t so much a squeezing of stories and needs and wants as there is a big jumble of them.
These days, there are new challenges. There is potty training. Moving to a big boy bed. Getting ready for preschool. Learning, continually, what it means to be a four-person family now that all four people can fill the airspace with thoughts and ideas. And these days there are still old challenges. There is refining and encouraging and work. He, we, still have work to do.
These days my struggle is that I am just fine with the way he talks. Yes can be yesh forever as long as I’m concerned. Pia instead of pizza? I love it. Hepacopter, pire truck, these words make me smile. And when he wants to waffle in my ear, my heart melts. (He means whisper, of course). I see no problem with any of it. I’m delighted that he forms these words because my heart is still bruised from the days when he couldn’t. It is still novel to hear his ideas and answer his questions and volley a conversation back and forth between us. I feel giddy every time it happens, as though I’m living a once-in-a-lifetime moment every single time. These days my struggle is that I forget we should all want more.
But, of course, we should. The reason we took his speech delay so seriously to begin with is because we want more for him. But, for now, I’m just happy to be here. Even if here is a little loud.
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linking up with Lisa.
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