This Many

I am pretty sure that I have previously mentioned Ephram's speech delay.
He has excellent language comprehension, but lags behind in his speech.
I first noticed the delay around 18 months, and he started speech therapy around that time.
Childhood Apraxia of Speech, the diagnosis.

And yes, I have done everything you are supposed to.
From the time he was born we talked about everything we did and everything we saw.
And we have read, read, read since he was a tiny infant.
He loves his books, and always has.
We point out things on walks,
I ask open ended questions.
I let him get frustrated in things,
And push him to use words when he wants something.
I prompt him.
But, although he did start saying first words at the normal time,
There was a point that he just didn't keep progressing.
His words never developed ending sounds.
And he had only two vowel sounds at 24 months.

Now that I have another infant to compare him to,
I notice it more.
Yes he cooed, and yes he babbled.
But definitely not with the same amount of sounds,
Or at the same frequency,
As his baby sister.
But he was my first baby, so I had nothing to compare it to.

He has made significant process since that time.
However, he definitely lagged again during our family crisis last spring.
(Which is not surprising considering the impact of it all on a two year old.)
Just in this past week I have noticed Ephram using words to try to communicate with us about 80% of the time.
It is so cute.
I love hearing his, "K-K Mama!" every time I ask him to do (or not to do) something.
Just a month ago, it would have been solely a nodded response.
It is so refreshing to have some idea of what he wants.
But I would say that his speech is somewhere around a typical 18 month old's.
Soon we will know as the school district is assessing him for preschool eligibility next year.

In his journey toward speech, Ephram has employed the use of signs and gestures.
It started when he was a baby and I taught him some simple sign language.
"Milk" was his favorite sign, closely followed by "more" and "all done".
Sometime in his second year he started making up his own signs.
I can't even begin to think of what all of these signs were/are because they are just a part of our life.
But when we are around others it becomes more obvious as those people have no idea what he is trying to say.
(This all made life very interesting when we had various nannies/friends helping out last spring/summer.)
One of my favorite signs he developed was for the word "big".
He would stand up on his tippy-toes, make a "working-hard" expression and stretch his hands up as high as he could over head.
This meant that he saw something big, like a bus - or that he wanted something big, like a daddy-sized cup for his water.  It was interesting how it translated to anything of large size.

Early this summer, he developed a sign for "a lot".

It was holding up all ten fingers and shaking them.
Usually accompanied by a giggling laugh.
So if I asked him, "How much does Mommy love you?"
I would get the ten finger response.
And if I said, "Do you want some goldfish crackers?"
I would get ten fingers and a tall stretch to let me know that he wanted a whole lot of them in a big bowl.
I was happy to see him starting to use his fingers in some semblance to represent numbers.

Then one day, when I was trying to teach him how to hold up two fingers on one hand, he discovered that he could hold up one finger on each hand to represent the same thing.
So, when we asked him how old he was, he started holding up one finger of one hand.
He'd shake his head, with a big smile, and jokingly say, "Nah!"
And the second hand would creep up next to the first with another finger held up to show that he was two.
He is so endearing.

Suddenly, he started to point out every time he saw two of something.
If I pulled out a cheese stick for him and a cheese stick for Charlie, up would pop the two fingers -
Accompanied by a beaming smile.
If we were on a walk and he saw a bus, and then within a few minutes another passed by,
Up went those two fingers again.
He started to use it to show us the idea of two things being similar.
And, for me, it was a brand new way of communicating with my son.
It was a window into his head,
Confirmation of his ability to learn.
And very cute.

Then his hands started to make shapes.
The first shape was a triangle.
He would carefully make it with his fingers, and then raise it up to eye level and look through like it was a window.
His way of telling me that he knew what a triangle was.
And later a square,
And a circle.

Ephram and I have our own way of talking,
And honestly... speech delay and all...
I wouldn't trade it for the world.