We LOVE how many new words we can understand from Zack each week. Some days, he comes home from a day of school, therapies, bus rides and playing outside and sits at our dinner table, spewing out full sentence after full sentence. He makes us smile, he constantly makes us laugh and I sometimes take it for granted. 

I mean, it’s just a dinner conversation, right?
It’s a lot more than that. 
It hardly even matters what the topics are, although those are pretty special, too. What matters is that, finally, after years of frustration on both sides at not being able to communicate with one another, I sit in a wooden chair opposite my 7-year-old boy I once feared would never speak, and I listen to syllables slip from his lips so very easily. 

He doesn’t just answer simple questions. He describes things. He uses different tones depending on whether or not he’s happy, sad, tired… 

And he tells jokes. He makes us laugh so much. The Dude is figuring out punch lines and delivery. 

His newest phrase is “Guess What?”
At 5am as he sneaks into bed with me: “Momma, Guess What?… I love you.”
At the table talking about what we want to do the next weekend: “Guess What?… I like to watch the football team.”
If he’s feeling ornery and testing his cuteness levels: “Guess What?…. BUTT!” 

I love his voice. I love hearing those words. I love when we play speech therapy and sentence-building apps together on his iPad. I love when he and Addie play make-believe scenarios together and I now hear him giving some of the orders: “Addie, you say, ‘Oh no!'” I love the way he lists football team names. I adore how he screams our neighbor’s name across the yard when he opens the back door, even if no one is home. I will take every “I love you”, even if it’s at 5 am, and even if I have to listen to “butt” jokes at the dinner table. 

Guess what?
I love hearing his words.