"Welcome"

Not in the come-in-take-off-your-jacket-stay-awhile way, but more in the appropriate-response-to-thank-you sort of way.

Currently, Jacob's biggest delay due to his prematurity is in the speech category. At his last assessment, he was measuring at 26 months for gross motor, fine motor and cognition. His receptive language was 19 months and his expressive language was 20 months.

We have been working feverishly for what seems like FOREVER to try and get this kid to talk. He started talking around 2, but when I say talk I mean repeating certain words we nagged him about on a daily basis. Like "say hi", "say please", "say Grace", etc. Usually he was pretty good about responding to us and repeating what we asked of him even if it wasn't very coherent in the beginning. He picked up on single words pretty quickly and learned the entire cast of Sesame Street in a day so he must have a good memory.

Although Jacob has been saying hundreds of individual words for months and months, our latest struggle has been two word phrases. Most kids his age are speaking in broken sentences (think caveman), but we haven't been able to get Jacob to say two words together, that is until about a month and a half ago. Whenever it is time to eat, or change a diaper I say "come on" to Jacob and wave him over to the gate so I can let him out of the play area. He comes running, we do what we have to do and go about our day. One day, when I said, "Jacob, let's change your diaper" his response was "come on, come on". I almost fell over! It came out of nowhere and I had been trying so desperately hard for him to say ANY two word phrase and I had never even thought about "come on". We had been working really hard, but on things like Hi Mama, let's go or thank you, (which usually comes out as one word and sounds more like "tanktoo").

Since that day, he has now started saying thank you, turn around, oh no, oh man, excuse me and go away. He has really started trying to imitate whatever it is he hears. The other day, while watching Jack's Big Music Show, the Schwartzman Quartet (for those of you familiar with this wonderful show) was singing Rain, Rain Go Away and when they got to the line "come again another day" Jacob yelled "COME-AH!" when they said come again and he was so proud of himself!

About a week ago, we were cleaning up in the play room and Jacob came over to hand me something. I said "thank you, Jacob" and he responded "welcome". I was floored! It is the first word he has said on his own without us prompting him to say it. We have been working so hard on him grasping the concept of please and thank you that we hadn't even attempted to make him say you're welcome. The kid is already confused enough! Every time he asks for something and I say, "what do you say?" He goes, "pleasethankyou'scuse me" to cover all his bases. He really has a hard time grasping which phrase and situation are appropriate.

Yesterday, in the car, we drove by a big truck and Jacob said "Awesome!" which is the second word he has said, in the correct context, that we have never prompted him for. Apparently, he is really starting to listen to our conversations and picking up on language. Looks like it is time for me to start phasing the word "crap" out of my vocabulary. It is a good thing I don't swear. I am having enough trouble trying to phase stupid and crap out of my vocabulary.......