Mostly Quiet on the Southwestern Front

Today has been quiet.

In my head.

Outside my head, it was a day filled with zany energy.  The berrykin bounced off the walls all afternoon, then napped, then woke up cranky and tantrumy.  When we finally got him calmed down from that, he babbled like a babbling thing.  I don't know that he stopped making noise for a two-hour stretch!  I really wish I knew what he was saying.  It's terribly adorable, his toddler language, but it would be fascinating to know what all he has to say.

Alas, my two-year-old still barely says more than a couple English words every day.

Part of me is concerned.  It listens to other kids his age talk using partial sentences and worries about why he doesn't.  The rest of me says that logically, it makes sense that he doesn't talk.  I don't talk a lot. I talk to him more than I talk to anyone, and I still don't talk a lot to him.  Jeremelon talks more than I do to him, but still doesn't talk a whole lot otherwise.  It's usually just one adult and the berrykin all day.  He has no siblings to talk to.  What few needs he has presently, he makes known with gestures.  Wet diaper?  He pats it or pulls on his shirt.  Want to play in that room instead of this one?  He grabs my hand forcefully and drags me in there.  For milk, he uses the sign for "more."  For food, he hands me his bowl.  If he wants to watch something, he turns it on by himself.  Two nights ago, completely out of the blue, he used the sign for "bath" because he wanted to get ready and go to bed. What does he need words for??

Plus, Jeremelon apparently didn't talk hardly at all until he was five.  Unknown languages abound in the kids up and down my family tree.  It's normal for us, I guess.  I know he understands most of what we say.  Just the other day, he was playing with some wall decor instead of napping.  I told him not to touch it.  He stopped.  Then he picked up his stuffed animal and used that to touch it, instead.  I told him not to play with the grandfather clock in the living room by referring to it as "that."  He took "that" to mean the particular pendulum he had his fingers on, so he moved on to play with a different pendulum.  He gets it.  He's got smarts.  He just doesn't talk.

He will, however, read books.  He finds it great fun to read to himself, and I really need to film it one of these days.  Because it's The Most Adorable Thing Evar.  He'll sit there for ten minutes going through pages and rattling off his own words in ways that perfectly mimic the way we read to him.  His tone rises and falls.  He pauses to turn the page.  He takes breath where he would need them.  And he "talks" so fast!

I try really hard not to be a worrier about this.  We had an appointment scheduled with speech therapists for an evaluation, and I backed out because I didn't think he needed it.  But...part of me still worries.

Ah, to be a mommy! :D