Yadda-yadda-yadda...

Some Mom I am... I told you all about my new dining room and not at all about my "new" son. I thought I had; I honestly did. My excuse is that work is CRAZY right now. I've written 6 speeches in the last 8 days during a period that is supposed to be the quiestest of the year (ya right!)

Okay back to Sam. We can't shut him up. He talks constantly, has an opinion on everything and wants you to hear it. This summer has been phenominal for him he has just exploded linguistically. That's how it was with Kamryn to some extent but she was just silent and then talked. Sam was unintelligible for so long and then I guess something just clicked. He, interestingly, speaks MUCH more French than English. Odd.

Anyway, despite having most of our worries about his language development assuaged Daniel insisted we go forward with the appointment we made to have his language formally evaluated. The speech pathologist came to our home last Thursday for the evaluation. I couldn't have been prouder of Sam. You never know which little boy will show up (or stay!) - cooperative, happy boy or miserable, tantruming, you can't make me boy. For a two year old, Sam couldn't have behaved better.

The speech pathologist told us that she planned to start off with her regular test and see how long he would tolerate the formal test but that at his age children normally couldn't do it. Ha! Sam was cooperative from start to finish. He was even having fun. The good thing about the test was that by being forced to say specific words/sounds, we got a very good picture of what he could and couldn't say. I was really surprised at some of the things I didn't think he could do that he did fine when pushed. I think he might be a "lazy" ennunciator. Why try if gobbledegook works? he was nailing complicated words AND he was doing a lot of them in English which truly is his second language (she brought the wrong test along with her). It was funny at one point she pointed to the duck on her flashcard and asked Sam what it was. He told her "canard" (duck in french). She was trying to see if he could say the "Du - ck" sound and told him it was "duck in english" he looked at her like she was from Mars and said "no! Canard!" I cracked up.

He did very well with the flash cards, describing things he wasn't even asked to descibe. He was using 3 word sentences. He was flying. She did four different tests and then skipped the last one because she told us he was definitely on track and maybe even ahead and she didn't feel it necessary to waste our time and money further. In truth he was using sounds that he shouldn't be able to do for a few years. I was very proud of him.

We're waiting for the report to be written up, but honestly all concerns are completely gone. Now our only concern is how we will survive two non-stop chatterboxes in the house. Poor Daniel, the only quiet one in the family, he will never get a moment's silence.