my fisher and a penguin
Today Fisher and I were reading one of his favorite Usborne books, How Deep is the Sea.
It is about a little penguin who has lots of questions about the world around him, just like my little guy does. Pipkin, the penguin, dives down into the ocean to see if he can discover how deep it is. He meets lots of other creatures on his journey and talks to them. Fisher asked me, “Can penguins really talk?” I said, “Yes, but they don’t speak English,” and he said “Oh, they speak Spanish?” It was so cute to hear him say the word Spanish, I don’t think he has ever said it before.
For those of you that don’t know, my Fisher didn’t speak at all till he was about 2 1/2. He said “mama” for the first time at Christmastime in 2006. He turned two in September. He didn’t really start talking to communicate till he was about 3 1/2. Even though he has been talking up a storm for the past two years, it is still music to my ears because I honestly didn’t know if he would ever speak. I didn’t know how it would all work out, but I trusted that somehow it would. They magic key to helping him find his voice was music. He loves music and so I started singing with him everyday. Simple songs that he could say a syllable of the last word, then the whole last word, then the last few sounds, then the last line, then the first line, then some of the sounds in the middle, then the words in the middle, and finally, the whole song. Music was our lifeline – with it, he was vibrant and tried his hardest to get the right sounds out. Without it, he was silent and the few sounds he did make sounded like utter nonsense to our ears.
He is still really hard to understand, but now he wants to communicate and he is improving his pronunciation all the time. Because he didn’t speak for so long, he has reams of information in his head that have never come out. Every time he says a new word I find myself jumping with glee on the inside because I know what a journey he has been on and what a struggle it is for his brain and mouth to work together to make those sounds come out.
Today’s word – Spanish.
I'm Tracy, a mama with big dreams, crazy ideas, loads of laughter, an insatiable desire to learn, and enormous piles of laundry.
Fisher, I’m so proud of you. You are growing up so very fine! You are speaking so well and you know many things. I’m glad you learned the word “Spanish!”