He Sings

I need to be doing better about blogging…for sanity, for progress tracking, and just for documenting life in general. Yesterday was a day worth mentioning.

First, the crappy part…my poor husband has a herniated disc. Apparently this is painful? I’m not sure how it compares to childbirth, but interestingly, there are striking similarities! Yesterday, my biggest baby (that’s Patrick) had to get an epidural steroid shot. This is supposed to help with inflammation around the disc so that maybe he’ll have better luck with physical therapy. Surgery is still potentially on the table, but we’re taking it one step at a time. Regardless, I tried to prep him and tell him that epidurals don’t hurt (mine didn’t at least), but I also tried to avoid telling him that steroid injections hurt like a bitch no matter where you get them! I’ve had A LOT of shots in my life including self injections of blood thinner right into my growing belly every single day I was pregnant. Not a one of those shots compared to the stinging of the steroid I got in my rear when I got strep throat a couple of years ago…but again, I may have failed to mention that to him ; )

He took it like a champ though (I give myself credit because he knew he could show no weakness or I would ridicule him with the “Oh please, I had two epidurals and THEN had to actually give birth after them.”). I just hope it helps…

Anyway, so we got home with the kids last night and my sweet boy did the most amazing thing. First, he ate his mac and cheese like a champ. He was in a great mood, asked nicely (signed for more) for his milk, asked for his cookies (the “c” sound suffices), asked for his cup (the “c” sound is multi-purpose), and then he sang me a song…

I mean he really sang me a song. I was holding cookies out to him one at a time, so I could continue to hear that wonderful “c” sound, when he stopped eating, looked at me, and began very obviously singing a song. He sang the whole thing, with repeated sounds that had a definite rhythm, melody, and even hand motions (it looked like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star!) through the whole thing! I mean this lasted like 45 seconds, and it was a complete song. He seemed very intent on finishing the whole thing and then very proud of himself when he was done. Thankfully Larkin knew when he was done so she clapped and said “yay!”…while I sat there awestruck fighting back the buckets of tears that were eager to fall.

Patrick and I looked at each other and had what I realize was a glorious moment of hope. Kellen was “on” yesterday, he was present in that moment, he was engaged the whole evening. He even said nigh-night when I put him to bed…I haven’t heard that in months. The song was completely new...the words were unrecognizable, it just sounded like some wire was crossed in his speech, like he was very deliberately using specific sounds, but to us it sounded like another language (we heard the same sounds repeated). What was so different about yesterday? what changed? what went right?

The scientist in me is fighting to start logging every detail of his life so that I can unravel this mystery. We’ve always said he responds so well to music, maybe we can sing directions to him, maybe we can use sounds as requesters, maybe if we can record him singing "words" to a known song, then we can try to translate those sounds into words, what if Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is the rosetta stone to deciphering what he's trying to tell us…

But then maybe I should just sit back and calm down and be grateful for a moment because…

…he sings…and that's forward progress...