You know, BEAR.....like grrrrrr

In a little over an hour, I have to take my youngest to his first speech therapy appointment.

I don't want to.

Really, I don't.

I know that he needs to go, and I'm doing all this privately instead of waiting until he's in school and letting the district deal with it. I'm being proactive and all that, but I don't want to. I know he needs to get a jump on it before he starts kindergarten in the fall. I know.

I do.


I know all that, but I love the way that he pronounces things. I giggle when he mispronounces something so badly that it sounds dirty when it shouldn't be. Like when he tried to say sixteen and a half once and it came out shitting in a hat.

I'm going to miss that.

I'm going to miss the way he says his big sister's name. I'm going to miss the way he says almost everything.

I know that I need to do this because he gets frustrated. Kids his age hardly ever understand him, and other adults who don't know him well struggle too. He is amazingly patient with most people most of the time, but every so often he gets to the end of that patience.

Last week while camping with my in laws, he got a scratch on his arm. Already conditioned to spinning old fishing tales, he was trying to tell my mother in law that a bear scratched him.

Except she couldn't understand him at all. He tried and tried and tried, and finally said, you know BEAR....like grrrrrr (as he put up his claws and roared at her).

I've been down this road before with my oldest son, I've learned the differences in structural problems and pure articulation problems. My oldest had a frontal lisp which still sneaks out when he's tired sometimes.

The evaluation for the little guy told me what I already knew, which is that about half of his mispronunciations are age appropriate, but about half of them aren't. His therapist is confident that it's all articulation issues, and they can all be overcome with regular therapy in a fairly short period of time. She's confident the rest of the world will soon be able to understand him.

Which is great and all, really it is....but this is the last piece of him that keeps him little, and I'm going to miss it so much.

Forgive me if I make more videos of him in the coming weeks than I normally do. I'm just hanging on to my baby a little bit longer.