Finally ...

Something seriously wonderful is going on with Truman and speech and feeding. I posted a few weeks ago that something seem to be starting to happen, but it was hard to really pinpoint. Basically, starting the day we left on vacation on June 10, Truman began adding words -- like 2 or 3 a day every day we were on our trip. Truman had about 10-12 words before we left. He's tripled that in the last two weeks.

Most of these new words probably can't be understood by others, but this is HUGE. He was just busting out with random words, like we were eating cake and he just grabbed a fork, said "cake" completely clearly and started eating some. So many times, we would say something and he would try to mimic us spontaneously. This is something we have NEVER seen before. He had started over the last month or so to be more receptive to prompting attempts to mimic, but it was never something he did on his own. It's like we are watching the brain re-wire right in front of our eyes. Here's some of what he's added this month:

• cake
• moon
• Okey Dokey (comes out "gogee gogee")
• bear
• door
• key
• car
• bumblebee (this one is really cute, because it's like "bahBEE")
• Mama (with Ms, not Bs)
• No (very clear)
• shoes
• socks
• home
• sweep
• up
• down
• drink
• silly
• sleep
• me
• two (can actually answer the how old are you question now)
• Aha!
• girl
• boy

There are a lot more I can't remember at the moment, but it's is so amazing to watch. He's also signing a lot more and doing so spontaneously. Often, he combines the spoken word and the signed word.

And, if that wasn't enough ... Truman has only vomited once in the last two weeks and has eaten several bites of table food at different meals. It's like all the setbacks we had while he was sick completely disappeared. He even ate meat.

There were several times during our trip that Ben and I just looked at each other with tears in our eyes as we watched all this. I feel like we can finally take a deep breath for the first time in almost three years.