Who dat?

Manny has been slow to speak, much slower than Jonah was, and with less articulation and enunciation. He tends to drop the last sound or syllable from several words, which I know can be a sign of a deeper speech pathology. When I mentioned this to our family doctor, he wrote a referral for Manny to see a speech therapist. The evaluation indicated that Manny's speech is, in fact, normal. The therapist actually recommended a session for him every week perhaps for as long as six months, which we've decided is overkill. Since the evaluation, though, we've emphasized the final sounds of words when speaking, asking Manny to repeat them if he drops them. His progress has been remarkable. On his own, he now includes the final sound of many words, especially new ones. (It's as if he's trying to unlearn some of the poor pronunciation on words that he learned longer ago.) He's also started putting together three and four word phrases and has started to ask questions using the big question words -- who what and where especially. Both of these are big steps.

As happy as I am to see this progress, though, I have to admit that I'm going to miss this "baby talk" when it's gone in too short of a time. His sweet little voice asking me, "Who dat?" of the trains in his catalogue is absolutely priceless. It took a little while to get him to say, "Who dat?" while on camera. I'm glad that I stuck with it. And there's a little extra Manny-craziness at the end to boot. "Who dat?" Dat, my friends, is my sweet Mooster.