My Boy's Growing Up.

Two posts in a single day? Are you kidding me? Wow. He’s either got lots of news to share, is feeling talkative or is bored at work. Well, it’s mostly the latter. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got stuff to do but I’m just not interested in doing it. Plus I’m on my break.

I mentioned a couple of months ago that Alex is in speech therapy to treat his childhood apraxia of speech (or “CAS”). He’s been coming along brilliantly and is up to spontaneous 4 to 6 word sentences. This is awesome. For a child diagnosed with severe CAS, to be spontaneously generating sentences of this length after only 7 months of treatment is truly amazing. But that’s not the best part. What is even better is that he is also spontaneously copying new words and repeating them without prompting. This means he is starting to overcome the apraxia barriers in his mind and body. And yesterday evening he showed me just how far he’s come.

We’ve had a big corner of our backyard cleared out of the weeds and crap. This left a big, bare patch of soil which we seeded with some grass. This has come up but the recent (and sudden) increase in temperature coupled with a lack of rain has turned it brown and its starting to die. Water restrictions have been eased lately so I thought we’d water it to try and get it going again. I was watering it when Alex came over and told me “My turn, Dad”. I gave him the hose and he ran off to spray the water into his sandpit. I told him to come back and water the grass.

“No. My turn, Dad!”

“But the grass needs water, Alex.”

“No.”

“But look, it’s all brown and sad. Its needs the water to be happy again.”

“Oh, no. My turn for happy!”

With that, he ran over to the grass and began to water it by running up and down, spraying water and saying “Happy! Happy!” over and over. He’s never said the word “happy” before. It involves several sounds he’s had trouble with (“H”, “Pee”) but he just took straight to it. It was wonderful and made the months of hard work worth every minute and cent we’ve spent. Occasionally he’d stop to survey his handiwork and see a brown patch he’d not seen previously. He’d say “Oh, no. Sad, Dad!” I’d ask him, “So what will you do?”, “I go happy!” would be his reply (we’re working on “make”). He’d smile at me and run off with the hose and water the patch of “sad” grass. It felt good to have him communicate with me. I can’t wait to hold long conversations with my boy.

A very special moment.

Its the simple things that make you happy as a parent. Monday, my boy took his first steps. Three, unsteady steps before he fell onto his hands and then crawled the rest of the way at break-neck speed but nonetheless, first steps. His Mum and I are very proud.

But last night he took what I consider to be his first walk. He walked about a metre and a half without holding anything or anyone, didn't fall and made it to his goal. And he did it just for me. Tuesday nights are Tash's night out. She gets a break from Alex and he and I spend some quality time together, a boy's night. And to show off to me, he walked on his own. Tash is extremely jealous. He hasn't done that for her yet.

To say I am proud is a bit of an understatement. I feel very special that he decided to make his first real walk a special moment just for the two of us.

And doesn't he look pleased with himself?


I love my little boy.