Speech Therapy...

Eli's journey though speech therapy began after his palate surgery. The first few weeks at speech therapy started with us singing the "Who's in charge of speech therapy? Miss Theresa! Who's not in charge? Not me!" all the way to speech. Eli, you see, wanted to do speech his way. His way was defined as fixing all of the toys in the room so that they were in the right (Eli's right) spots and organized correctly. Then he wanted to direct his own therapy by choosing the activities and the sounds he wanted to work on. It took him a little while and a bit of singing to realize that possibly Miss Theresa knew better than Eli what was best for him when it came to his speech development. He also struggled a lot with focused sitting and working and needed some help from some therapeutic aids. He also was pretty difficult to understand. Theresa needed lots of translation from Mommy at the beginning.

And now on this, his last day of speech therapy, he sits, he reads, he focuses, he listens, he talks and she can understand every word. Theresa and I were tearing up as we remembered the Eli of less than a year ago and looked at the very different little boy before us. I have to admit, there were quite a few tears in the waiting room while I listened to Eli and Theresa have their final chat through the door. Eli looked at my tears in the car on the way home and said, "Why are you crying? I all done with speech therapy!" Thank you, God, for Theresa and for Eli and for him being here and having the opportunity to have her in his life!