Weekend Fun (and a Not-So-Fun Thing)

This past Saturday started at 4:10 AM for me (that was not by choice- this pregnancy insomnia thing is so not cool). Later that morning, I made a solo trip to Thomasville to attend a very cute blue and brown themed baby shower for Heather, Eric's cousin Jonathan's wife (did you catch that?), who is due about exactly a month before I am. I had a great time there! Good conversation and good food= good times. She's having a baby boy who they have named Samuel Jacob, and it'll be great to get our little ones together this summer... and beyond! The drive actually helped me to wake up a little bit; I was able to blast my music good and loud and do some truly terrible singing. :)

I arrived back home just in time to round up the guys for Jackson's best bud Scott's (did you catch that?) 2nd birthday party. It was a Finding Nemo themed party, complete with TONS of one of Scott's favorite things- balloons. It doesn't take a whole heckuva lot to impress 2 year old boys, so balloons, food, and toys were thoroughly enjoyed by all. Oh- and something so wonderful happened for us at the party... but I totally missed it! Jackson said "Cake!" repeatedly as we came into the room to sing to Scott and cut his cake. Eric and a couple of other people heard it and commented- and I was shocked to hear that they were talking about Jackson! This was really one of the first times he's said something that was both crystal clear and with purpose. Scott's mom Suzanne offered to let me watch the footage of the party, so I could finally hear for myself. I think that's so awesome of her.

Speaking of the speech thing... that's the not-so-fun thing I was alluding to in this blog's title. Not-so-fun, because it's been a source of stress for us for a while now. I would definitely say that Jackson's expressive language has always been somewhat delayed, which can be very normal for boys. He's said a couple of simple "words", and we've had quite a few "did he just say that?" moments, but nothing much to speak of on a consistent basis. His receptive language, on the other hand, has progressed in leaps and bounds. We feel that he understands most everything that we are saying, can identify and point to a ton of things around him, name quite a few body parts, point to items in books and magazines when asked, follow multi-step commands, etc. He does a lot of babbling and pointing to get his points across, etc. etc. It's just his speech that's missing. I say "just", but that's a huge part of development. I felt that it was time to stop waiting and move forward with seeing what we could do about it, and Eric agreed. I took him to our pediatrician Monday (his 21 month "birthday"- where we found out that J's about 37 inches and 35 pounds(!)). Our ped, who is fabulous by the way, confirmed what Eric and I knew- that Jackson has approximately a 6-9 month delay in expressive language, but seemed otherwise normal for his age. He did suggest an evaluation by an ENT to rule out hearing difficulties, as well as a speech/language evaluation. He also told us that Jackson would most likely be a late talker, and it would probably be another 6 months before he really got going. We're stepping up what we've been doing at home, and have already seen progress! We also hope to get speech therapy for him soon to get him caught up to speed as soon as we can. I know that little dude's got a lot to say. :) Many thanks to some very supportive and honest friends who have let me talk through this and have given advice to me in the past few days. I appreciate it so much. Eric and I do have a fairly laid-back parenting style, and try not to let the neuroses creep in too terribly :), but we also felt like this issue is just something that's better off being addressed sooner rather than later. The prevailing attitude is: the earlier the intervention, the quicker the "cure"- which definitely makes sense.