a proud momma

Jun 09

Posted by: Rachel in: blog, caleb isaiah, just another day in paradise, memories, parenting

I’ve been trying to pinpoint how I’ve been feeling lately. When I look back on your first year, of course I am proud of all of your accomplishments. You cooed, you crawled, you made yucky faces at pureed squash, you walked, then ran. I got all of my weekly email updates on your development as it progressed, and you followed right along with the ‘average’ ages that babies achieve new feats. Of course I was happy, but I think I just expected it to happen, it happened, I was happy. I never really thought about the possibility of you not progressing right along schedule.

Then I started recieving all of these emails about the beginning of lauguages, communication, and the vocabulary explosion. But silent, you remained. I started to get a little nervous. Certainly it could be blamed on the french fries I ate when I was pregnant. Or maybe it was the fiery hot peanuts. Are you one of those kids that reacted negatively to a vaccine? Did the nurses drop you on your head the one time I sent you to the nursery for an hour before you demanded to be returned (by screaming from the second you were pushed through the nursery doors until they called me and told me they would feed you formula or bring you back because you had been screaming for an hour and they couldn’t make you stop. You stopped the second you saw that you were back with us. I fell in love. Again. At one day old). So anyway I blamed myself, as most mothers do, for your lack of speech.

Time went on, and your second birthday approached. But nothing. I would point to my mouth, and you would watch carefully, but never ventured to try out a word or two. You stuck to the words you knew, and had added to your vocabulary around 9 months old (mama, dada, baba, nana, etc). Each day that passed, I worried a little more. I enrolled you in speech therapy, and you picked up a few signs, but still weren’t saying much outloud.

I never had any doubts that you understood me. You have the hearing of coyote. You could easily follow complex directions, and show through play and daily skills that you understood everything I said. Just before you turned two, you became an animal dictionary. You began adding animal noises to your few spoken words. Before I knew it, I could ask you what 15 different animals said, and you would respond appropriately.

Then it happened. Almost overnight. The sudden language explosion that I had heard so much about. I would guestimate the first twenty or thirty words; They were pronounced absolutely perfect. Like you had been holding them in to be sure that when you tried it outloud, it would be perfect. Since then, we’ve seen a little less concern with perfect pronunciation, and lot more delight of saying hundreds of words. I has been truely incredible. I find myself beaming every single day at something that just blows me away. Yesterday, you looked at our new gateway monitor box. It compared in size to the box that Scott’s RC monster truck was packaged in. Please keep in mind I gave that to Scott last August. But you were convinced that Daddy’s truck must be in that big monitor box. It was of similar size and dimensions, so that must be it. You demanded my 100% attention, and began clapping your hands wildly (which is the best way to describe the sign for open). “Ohen bi box, dada bi yewwow tuck, ohen bi yewwow tuck box” Translated: Open big box, daddy’s big yellow truck, open big yellow truck box. Upon further examination of the contents, you said “All gone bi yewwow tuck. Bi yewwow tuck here.” All gone big yellow truck. Big yellow truck here, as you pointed toward the back porch where Daddy’s truck is up on a shelf. Amazing.

Just a few minutes ago, you noticed a hole in my ratty pajama pants. You’ve had a few books to say the least that have required ripped page repairs. So pants must work the same way. After sticking your finger in the hole, and telling me it was there five or six times, you said “need tape, fis hole.” I needed tape to fix the hole. Why of course! So we went and got the tape out and fixed my pants. Thank goodness.

You can count to 10. You can say and recognize at least half of the capital letters in the alphabet! Hands down, your favorite book right now is Dr. Seuss’s Are You My Mother? You have a few favorite shows, Wow, Wow, Wubbzy, Go Diego Go, Dora the Explorer and the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

And me? I’m just glowing. You take my breath away on a daily basis. I feel like I need to call and ~~bore~~ tell every single person I know what you’ve said and done that day. I know they probably wouldn’t share in my total amazement. Of course they would humor me and say oh that’s so great. And they’d probably hang up the phone and be sure to be ‘washing their hair’ around this time tomorrow. But I can’t help myself. I’m so…well…proud. I’m so proud of you. And I love you so much.