These Little Voices

We officially have two talking kids. Babyboy’s speech was pretty delayed; we didn’t hear any consistent language from him until late fall, when he was almost two and half years old.  It was the speech delay more than anything that prompted his evaluation and then diagnosis with mild Autism.

With intensive speech and social pragmatic therapy, he has made great strides. While we are so, so happy to hear everything he does have to say, he does have an odd way of talking. At his Developmental evaluation in February, they described  as frequent echolalia, with “an unusual prosody”. He repeats almost anything we say to him, deliberately, carefully, divided into slow syllables; he almost sounds as if he has a thick Southern accent.

But we marvel at his day-to-day progress, and how much clearer his speech is becoming. The other day, we were preparing to brush his teeth. He wanted to put the toothpaste on the toothbrush, and grabbed it away from me, to try. He struggled with it a little while, then handed it to me, saying “Here you go mummy PEESE put toof-paste on.”

Meantime, Babygirl is 15 months old, and every day seems to have a new word. She’s started to put them together: her current favorite is “No Way.”

As in, “Would you like some more yogurt?”

“Nooo waaay,” she pipes up, waving me away with her chubby little hands

We have no idea where she picked that up.

Likewise, Babyboy comes out with phrases, and we can’t figure out where they come from. Yesterday Hubby called to him from the other room, where he was tending to Babygirl. “What are you up to, little guy?” he called.

“NUTHING.” came the reply.

What? Where does a home-care little kid come up with that? Yes, he does go to a Behavioral playgroup through EI, but bless their little hearts, it’s a whole group of boys like Babyboy: 7 barely verbal (likely on the spectrum) toddler/ preschool boys. So who knows.

Our kids, they are so, so cute. Their little voices are so, so cute. I want to record so much of their day and keep it forever.

Bedtime with Babyboy: “No want night-night YET. Want watch more Caill-ou.”

Morning with Babygirl: “Milk. Milk. Milk. Momma!”

Playtime with Babyboy: “Go OUT-side? Go PAY-gownd?”

Playtime with Babygirl: “Mucka mucka mucka mucka mucka.”  (We don’t know either.)

We both have phones we can record video with. We’re working on figuring out where we will upload and store home videos of these little moments, the funny phrases and conversations, their adorable squeaky pipey little voices.

Because we know they’ll grow and change… and so will their voices.