And my, how far she has come.
When she was a newborn in the NICU she couldn't cry. Well, she did cry, but she cried silently. When we went home at night to sleep I always worried that her cries would go unnoticed by the nurses when we weren't there. Her little face would still scrunch up and she would cry with all her might. It just so happened that she didn't have much might when she was in heart failure.
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| Seriously. He didn't realize she was crying. |
Then after heart surgery, Cora started to find her voice. She started to cry. Granted, it wasn't a loud cry. More like a little kitten mewl. But for several weeks after surgery she cried a lot, obviously in discomfort, despite the surgeons' assurances.
She gradually began to babble, jabber and yell. But for the longest time, even her yells weren't very loud. As a parent you seem to feel every sound your child makes, so it always felt loud to me. But when I heard typical babies cry or yell I would realize just how quiet my girlie was.
As time has gone by and her core strength has improved, she's been gaining some volume.
These days she loves to yell and yell loud. While she still can't easily make high pitched noises (the only exceptions being her pretend hiccups, followed by her giggling "excuse me," signed while she says "eeeee eeee"and the occasional split second when her squeal hits a higher octave when Daddy gets home from work) she's got a pretty low, gruff little voice.
Lately she's been using that gruff voice to growl. It's not uncommon for her to vehemently growl "NO," while swinging at me from the confines of her seat as I clean her face. Yes, we definitely hear some disgruntled yelling throughout the day.
But for the most part we hear her happy excited yell, her game of saying "no" to everything, and her more and more frequent words and sounds. It's starting to become increasingly obvious that my Little Miss is trying to talk. She definitely has some motor difficulties that are keeping her from making words sound the way the rest of us say them, but she is trying all the same. And she is making progress, little by little.
It's a slow path. But she is finding her voice more and more every day. And we are (mostly) loving hearing it.
Oh I know that feeling- how your kid is THE loudest kid in the room. At least it always seems like mine is :) The motor difficulties- well they are difficult. Those are definitely what Abby struggles most with to move past. It does ocme though. And soon enough were telling our non-verbal kids to be quiet- just like we always wanted :)
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