The end of an era of sorts

Kyle has been slow to talk, and I’d been anxiously waiting for the day when I would be able to have conversations with my little guy. Back in the spring I had him tested and he was borderline for speech development, so I was told I could do speech therapy and speed him along, or not do it and he would eventually talk fine. Since the therapy was free through our intermediate school district and in my home, I couldn’t see passing it up. We got about a half dozen sessions in before the summer break.

Well, in the past month or two Kyle’s vocabulary has literally exploded. He will try to say just about any word, and pulls words out of the blue that I never realized we’ve even said to him. And when we read books he will point things out and say them, making it clear that he has been listening all this time and just waiting for the right time to tell me what it was he has been thinking. There are even books that he “reads” to me now, and actually does a good job. He is constantly telling me letters, colors, shapes, and what things are, I think just to provide himself with an opportunity to say something.

I am so excited for this new chapter in Kyle’s development, and what it means for our relationship. My worries about his speech development can drift away. But there’s a tiny part of me that is a little sad. All the little quirky words he used, like ba boof for Mulligan and any other dog (morphed out of woof woof) and kai kai for any type of bird (morphed out of quack quack), are gone. Now he says Mull Mull or Mull-gan and dog and he says duck and bird. He calls animals by their names now instead of the sounds they make. All the many, many signs we used when we talked in sign language have been replaced by words. Even the last hold out for his signs, thank you, Kyle now says. (Although he will sign something very emphatically if he thinks you are ignoring him when he is speaking it, LOL! Or if I can’t seem to grasp what word he is saying he will sign it.)

So I am thrilled with the language development as of late, but see it as both a new chapter and the closing of an old one. It’s not the first time, and by far not the last, when I see Kyle growing so quickly that I both embrace the new and shed a small tear for the old.