Even his speech therapist is just thrilled and amazed to see his little personality emerge. Lately, she is always writing cute little stories about what he did or said at school in his "communication log" (a little book that we use for corresponding). I am so glad we have this book--it will be a wonderful keepsake. It's already been great for seeing his progress. The first entries are all about him learning a new sign or attempting to say a new word. Now, his book is full of 3 and 4 word phrases that he says completely spontaneously. AMAZING!
Ok, now here's what really prompted me to write an entry all about Ryan. Tonight I cooked a whole roasted chicken for dinner. When I took the chicken out of the oven he was soooooo excited! He started jumping around and waving at the chicken and saying "bahk-bahk" (the chicken sound). It was very entertaining to see how excited he was about the chicken and to watch him try to "communicate" with the chicken. After a few minutes he looked at me and said "why talk not?" He was wondering why the chicken was talking back to him. His facial expression was actual more funny that the question. He was very serious and seemed very confused about why this chicken he had waited so long to talk wasn't responding. I told him "the chicken isn't alive, we're going to eat it". Of course, that led to many "why's" and me trying to answer each why question in a way that he might understand. Finally, after one of his questions I just said "Ryan, he doesn't even have a head anymore". He stopped suddenly and looked at me with even more confusion and said "bahk not see!!!" with a great deal of incredulity. Again, the expression on his face was too cute. This back and forth banter about the chicken went on for a while. I finally decided I even needed a picture of this moment (which I will add to this when I can) because I know one of these days I will miss these little conversations with him (and forget them if I don't write them down). And, since I knew I had to write about it, I wanted a picture of what he looked like in hopes that one of these days I can picture his wonderful little expression throughout the exchange.
Another cute little Ryan story. He often takes a fish oil supplement, but he can't swallow it whole. He chews it and then swallows the "shell" afterwards. Let me stop here to say I can't imagine how gross that would be, but he doesn't seem to mind. Tonight he was actually "joking" with me. He was pretending like he couldn't swallow it and kept making a swallowing motion and saying "me not (swallow motion)". I kept saying "well, spit it out then". Finally, after going through this a few times I realized he was just playing around. He had already swallowed it and just wanted to joke a little.
I can't even describe how happy I am to be able to have conversations with him now. Every night we read books before bedtime. I have so much FUN! talking to him about the books afterwards. I know that when the girls were this age I took those moments for granted because they had been talking for a long time and talked non-stop. With Ryan, I feel like I've been waiting for this day for ages and I can't get enough of it! He still has trouble with longer words and he can be difficult to understand, but he's REALLY talking now!!
Here's Ryan "waving" at the chicken
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