a switch flipped.

Three weeks ago, we were still exactly where we had been with Lorelei's speech delay. No new words, no new sounds - just frustrations and worry. And then, suddenly - a switch flipped.

Yesterday, my little almost-two-year old was running around the yard with her father, yelling "Da-do-dew, da-do-dew!" at our new daffodils just starting to open up in the garden, pointing at the sky demanding "hummina, hummina" even though it's still too early for hummingbirds to be here yet, and exclaiming "Wow!" to herself every time she went down the slide.

I know it's what most toddlers are supposed to be doing, but it feels like a miracle to us. Every time she imitates a word or fills in the blank in a book we're reading out loud, we look at each other and hold our breath a little bit.

It's still an uphill battle, and she needs a lot of prompting most of the time, but Lorelei seems to have turned a corner on verbal expression. Besides the two longer words I mentioned above, she's still stuck on one syllable words and is missing a lot of consonants plus one or two vowel sounds. She still refuses to say words that she's already learned signs or approximations for (which is a lot, since she used that as a crutch for so long) so we are working on figuring out ways to encourage her to change that habit. But hearing her say "Bye, Daddy, bye" at the door every morning is making the tricky stuff seem a lot less daunting.

A few pictures of what we've been up to, since I've been away for so long (still no computer, still working my fingers to the bone to get ready for the Na-Da Sale...more on that soon!):

(scrunchy face - bird watching with Dad - playing with her dress-up box - saying "pour!" as the lid fell off her teapot during a little impromptu party)