"Oh, you must be here to play with me!"

The last few months have brought us many visitors. I called Early Intervention/the NC Infant and Toddler program because of John's delayed speech. Jessa, our service coordinator came over to speak with us. Then she brought Van to evaluate him. Then she brought Ginny to do the speech evaluation. We got temporarily set up with Martha, a speech therapist who filled in until Michele came to work with him consistently. In each situation, we've tried to keep the hoodlums (A & T) in the back of the house so the expert/therapist could actually HEAR John. Usually, mom, John, and the therapist are in a room together.

Yesterday, we had DUCTZ come to the house to check out our air conditioning system, go into our crawlspace to investigate, etc. When the hoodlums where in a different room and the DUCTZ guy, John, and I were in a room by ourselves, John lit up and started trying to engage the gentleman. He was pointing to the Elmo sticker the pediatrician had given him and trying to talk with him about it. He was watching the man's lips, being super-animated, and so on. It took me a day to figure out why he was so lively and expressive with him. John must have assumed the man arrived at our home to "play" with him as all the other visitors have the past few months. If the others were off playing in another room, and just mom, the visitor, and John were in the room, surely it was for a speech therapy session, right?

He's doing really well with his language since starting therapy, by the way. We're amazed.