Knowledge is Power

It was like flipping a light switch. That's how quickly and completely the transformation occurred. The look on his face when he made the realization, and the tears running from my face to his, was a moment I will re-live in my mind an infinite number of times.

Sam spoke to me. He called me by name. With his little hand on my cheek, he looked into my eyes and said 'Mama.'

For months now Sam has been a babbling machine. We've gone through the ba-ba-ba's and the eff-eff-eff's and the zee-zee-zee's. Whenever he is awake, sounds fly out of his mouth without pause. Occasionally he'll look up at me or SOB for a reaction, but then his secret monologue continues. When he makes a sound that could even loosely correlate to some real word, we've tried to encourage him by showing him the object or person and repeating his sounds.

For months.

I was starting to think that perhaps he might never utter more than a nonsensical string of syllables. But then, something clicked. For a few weeks, his babble of choice was a run on sentence of ma-ma-ma-ma's. As soon as he would start up, I would point to myself and tell him that I was his Mama. Over and over. And? OVER!

Yesterday morning I was changing his diaper. He was laying down on the table looking up at me, and I saw intention written on his face. He reached out for me, as he usually does, but this time he wasn't trying to touch my hair or earrings. He wanted to share that he knows me. As someone more than the boob lady or the giver of baths.

And with those two little sounds, he stole my heart all over again.