Life As A Moore...: Speech...

So, our son, Samuel, has struggled with speech from the beginning. He started speech therapy at 19 months and continued to have it weekly until this recent move -- only because I'm a slacker and haven't set it up yet. Knowing that I didn't talk much until I was 4 years old, I always kind of wondered if he'd be the same way. Sure enough, his speech has improved a TON since he turned 4. It's weird -- almost as if a light switch turned on. I still need to set speech up in our new location, as he still prefers starting words with "D" or he leaves out the initial consonant of each word, etc., but we can actually understand him a majority of the time now. We continue to tell him how awesome he's doing and how much he's improving -- it's amazing how far he's come!

I must admit…I'm going to be a bit sad when some of the words he struggles with are corrected. He has always said "die" for "bye" and that always leaves us chuckling, ha. I mean, you have to admit, when he's waving and having the biggest smile of his face while saying, "Die, Daddy!!! Die!!!", you'd laugh too! Lately, it's when he says it to his "baby" (Caleb). When I put Caleb down for a nap, Samuel will shout with a smile, "Die, baby!!! Die!!!" He wishes people to die with the best intentions, ha.

Our conversations with Samuel are priceless. I love that we can finally understand most of what he's saying -- a 4 year old's mind is a trip. The things he'll say will catch us off guard and have us laughing hard at times. It's amazing the little things one can take for granted. Okay, I suppose speech is a rather large thing, but still. For so long, we'd have to tell him we unfortunately don't understand what he's trying to tell us and you could see the frustration in his face. There are still moments like that -- especially when he's super excited and can't spit out what he wants to say -- but they're not as often.

Here's a little clip of Samuel playing with James a couple days ago. He always gets camera shy, so he's not talking near as much as before I hit record, but you get the idea…

Excuse Caleb's super hip outfit -- it's something we bought our first son, Jacob, in 2003, so it's a bit outdated, ha.