Introducing: Joshua the Spectacular!!

I think it was about a year ago that I wrote my first blog post entirely about Josh and the struggles he has had with his speech delay. I wrote that there was a little boy in my life who I spend every day with that I sometimes feel I barely know because his challenges obscure so much of who he is.

I'd like to take a minute now to report that in the past year I have met Josh, and he is spectacular.

In August he began going to all-day school as part of the PPCD (Preschool Preparation for Children with Disabilities) program he has been in since he was three. I was VERY worried about how he would handle being at school for seven hours a day, five days a week. I mean, he's only four years old! And he's just barely four years old! For the first week, he would come home exhausted and confused and ask if tomorrow he could just go to a little school, not a lot of school (when he was 3 he only attended for three hours a day). But after that, and with a little adjustment of our sleeping schedules, he started asking if he would be able to go to school for a long time tomorrow too.

And he has blossomed into the brilliant, caring, inquisitive child I always hoped was inside, wrapped under layers of frustration and anxiety and loneliness and fear.

He has made some wonderful new friends in class, and it's so exciting to see the kinds of people he has chosen. Every other friend he's had has been a child of one of our friends, and they are also wonderful little people that we are blessed to have in his life, but these are the first friends he has picked for himself. He comes home from school every day talking about Sawyer, Chloe, and Elle and the fun they had together and how nice they are. 

I still sometimes feel like a failure because he has needed to learn things from others that were my responsibility to teach him, things that mothers should get to teach and that I was very much looking forward to teaching. And it hurts every day that my baby spends the bulk of his day in a classroom and not with me where I very much want him to be because he just wasn't getting the help he needed here at home. I am unspeakably jealous of the teachers who get to be with him more than I do.

But I am so very grateful that, even though I was unable to get him to this point, he has arrived. He tells me about his dreams, which often involve his favorite stuffed animals Wally the Walrus and Teese the Dragon or an assortment of dinosaurs. He "reads" to Scout at night after Mario and I tuck them in. He tells stories about Prince Joshua and Princess Scout and Prince Daddy and Princess Mommy and their animals (of which there are many). He makes up silly songs that he sings to me about Legos or video games or cupcakes. I have in fact heard several unsolicited "I love you, Mommy"s. He still has rough days and he will likely need speech therapy for a few years yet, but he doesn't have to struggle for every word now, and that is a beautiful thing.

He is finally able to express himself, and I often find myself chatting with him and I have to stop myself from crying because it makes me so happy to see him thriving. When I use a word he doesn't recognize, he asks what it means. He asks for explanations of things he's interested in. And he actually listens because he just can't get enough information about this amazing world that is opening up before his eyes as his language is finally approaching the same level as his intelligence and curiosity.