Working on Speech

We have put Luke into speech therapy to help him with, well, his speech obviously. For the record, I don't think all kids with aunts who are speech pathologists wind up in speech therapy, just the one's whose aunts are also pushy. :) I'm only kidding, and no, Maureen didn't say anything to me about his speech delay. I had no doubt she was getting ready to though as I witnessed her secretly evaluating Luke on our Christmas visit to Chicago and she has confirmed that fact for me since then too..... Siblings always know what's up. :)

Anyway, he's had about 5 or 6 visits with the speech therapist by now I guess. It was slow going at first because he didn't respond to her, but it is progressing nicely now. He has certainly picked up more words over these 6 weeks, but his pronunciation is still a work-in-progress. Although, the most important thing I think he has picked up is that we want him to vocalize something. Like he won't just stand there crying and waving his hands at you to pick him up; he'll stand there waving his hands up at you still, but now he'll grunt something that sorta sounds like "up". Or, now we can tell him "Luke, say ... " and he tries to say something that resembles the word you asked him to say. It usually sounds nothing like it, but he gives you the right number of syllables and mostly the right vowels sounds. Here, see what I mean in this video clip:
I have NO IDEA why he calls Venus "Noni". Is sounds nothing like Venus, but that's what he consistently calls her. We'll yell out the back door "Venus! Venus!" to get her to come inside and, without fail, Luke will come running after you to the back door and scream - angrily - "Noni! Noni!" as though she's in trouble. It's really cute.