The beauty of Why

This weekend was both frustrating but also involved a milestone which made up for everything!

It felt like a lot of his speech regressed a bit today – not only was a lot of it unintelligible, there was a few times where Id ask him something and he wouldnt even try to say anything, not even the garbled babbling (I hate the term “babble” but I cant think of another word to describe it)

It was either silence or a repetitive “mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm” (except when I said “you’re not using your words?” And he said “oh-hey” [okay] )

But, Ive been teaching him the sign for Why because thats a huge thing for me – I hate that he’s never asked a question before. I think I asked him to pick up toys or something, and he starts tapping himself on the forhead going “ai ai ai ai ai” and it took me a second to realize – he was trying to sign and say why!!! I dont even remember what I told him but I gave him the biggest hug ever!

I love that child so much ❤ I never thought it was possible to feel my heart melt so many times over one little human ❤❤

Update on nothing

Once again, I start something with lots of idealistic commitment goals – aaand disappear. I actually used to have an online thing through another site years ago, chronicling the day to day craziness of my methy life and I managed to keep that up till the site went down, so Ill get into a good rhythm here. Like anything else, just takes time & practice.

So, COVID 19. Messed up. My work is considered essential so my routine has basically stayed the same, just with more sanitizer and less impulsive spending. Still see my son on the weekends so that’s the main thing. My mom’s been having a bit of a rough patch health wise though, so thats been hard, and pretty scary sometimes. Not ready to go into details on that though.

Another tough thing is the lack of appointments with my son’s SLP. He’s been making some progress and I dont want him to regress too much (I know some is inevitable) We learned a couple new signs though – “help” and “why”. Id see him struggling with something, and half the time he’d get angry if I asked if he wanted some help, the other half Id keep quiet and he’d get mad because he couldnt do it… Now he’s starting to ask for help using the sign so that puts some of the control back in his hands, so to speak.

The “why” is so important though … I keep telling him there’s so much to learn about things that we dont always think to explain, and that him asking or signing “why” will let us know when he wants to know more. Fingers crossed, Im really gonna work on that one this weekend!

One of the downsides to waiting so long between writing, is that there’s so much to write that it just feels scattered and messy and too much… So Im gonna leave it at this, and try to get myself more mentally focused.

Too much to process

So there’s a lot going on. The whole point of this is to have a place for me to sort through my head but I hardly even know where to start.

My mom’s sick. I dont even like using the c word – its as though if I talk about it too much it will make it real. Ive got all these big medical words from her last round of tests, what the doctors put on her report that she wont talk about. Im not ready to look them up yet. I need her to be here for at least a few more years. Minimum. I need her here whem Xaviar goes to his first day of kindergarten. I need her here for when his speech progresses and he can tell her a story. I just need her here to be my mom because Ive wasted so much damn time being an idiot over the years.

I should have pushed myself harder. Sooner. I should’ve not let myself be so afraid of messing up & worked on getting custody back sooner. I really think it did help keep my mom younger at first, when they took legal guardianship so I could finish rehab & get my legal problems dealt with. I think I waited too long though – by the time I realized how tired she was getting, I was only just starting to work towards getting myself stable enough to bring my son home.

Just 1 more month and I should be ready. At least to start transitioning him a couple days at a time.

Tomorrow is his first speech therapy since he was diagnosed with Speech Apraxia. Im actually kind of excited to see what direction things will go now. I printed out & started learning new signs in anticipation, and have been working on exaggerating my pronunciation a bit more with Xaviar.

Im gonna work on getting in the habit of wring more regularly as well. I think it’ll help.