"Wuv you Mom"

For those of you who know my 3 year old, you know about all his speech issues.  He didn't say much at 18 months and I didn't think anything of it.  He was always smiles.  He is such a momma's boy.  And, you would think I would be concerned with my eldest own speech issues.

Thankfully, we moved back to a city where there is a wonderful 3 year old program and we became connected with an amazing parent liaison named Jean.  Jean really put all my parenting concerns at ease and was always available to pass some of her parenting wisdom on to me.  She noticed he was not talking that much either.  She gave me the number of our county's "Birth to Three" program.  If you live in the state of Wisconsin and have a child under 3 years of age who has developmental delays, an agency who contacts to administer the "Birth to Three" program will come out to your home and perform an evaluation on your child to determine the extent of the delay.  Once its determined, you are setup with home visits with a therapist or you come to their office location.  In our case, the speech therapist came out to us.  He made some real progress in the year in was in the program.

When he was almost 3, a referral was made to our school district and he goes through an evaluation process again.  Then you meet with the school district staff to develop the IEP (Individual Educational Plan).  At this meeting it was determined he would ease into  a speech and language class.  Since his birthday was so late in the year, he started the class a couple of days a week.  Then the next school year, we would go the four days a week.

He is in a 3 year old kindergarten with a teacher who really is the "speech whisperer".  He is much easier to understand and more verbal now than ever. His teacher assessed is expressive skills.  His expressive skilled tested well above average.  He interacts with all the boys and girls in his class.  He looked forward to going to school everyday.

So today we hit a milestone.  He came up to me and said, "wuv you Mom." To my surprise, I responded, "Did you say you love me?" He responded, "Yes, wuv you Mom." :)  My heart is overflowing with amazing love for him and each of our sons.  It so made my day.