learning to talk

I don't post a lot of video (mainly because it takes too long to upload!) but this one is just amazing. 

So I had to post it.  (And now I'm inspired to go back and post a Christmas video of Isaac that still makes Matt and me laugh out loud every time we watch it.) 

But first, you've gotta see this of John Paul learning to talk.  As a reference point, for the first six months he was home (pre cleft repair) John Paul only made about five sounds.  He used the 'm', the 'n' (less often'), the 'l' (even less than m/n), and occasionally a deep gutteral 'g' sound. 

He said only three or four distinguishable words, and rarely made any effort to use a specific word to communicate. 

That being said, he does use sounds/noises to communicate.  And he is a pro at combining his sounds with body language, hand motions, etc. to get his point across.  I sometimes momentarily forget he can't talk, because he is communicating so very clearly (at least to me). 

All that to say, in the past few weeks John Paul started trying out some words.  And it is awesome.

His cleft affected his speech development in huge ways.  John Paul never blew bubbles (like most 4 month olds) or babbled (6 months) or clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth or any of those critical speech/language development milestones.  He's got a lot of ground to make up.  I think it's going to be a long journey, but we're gonna try to have a whole lot of fun along the way.