"Awah"

As I mentioned in my very first post, E just turned two. He is the least verbal of our children. By the age of two, his sister was saying all sorts of things like, "a volcano goes BOOM!" His brother was also on the slow side with his speech, but was still saying more than E is now at this stage.

So I took E to the pediatrician for his check-up and aside from the fact that he is a wimpy 25th percentile in both weight and height, he is apparently substantially behind in the speech department as well. When I say substantially, I mean substantially. I was given a sheet of paper regarding 2-year old development and it states that "by the age of 2, your child should have a vocabulary consisting of 200 words."

WHAT? TWO HUNDRED WORDS? What wahoo put together that figure?

We're talking, E says a grand total of 18 words. These 18 words consist of both English and Korean ones, plus words that he has made up. "Awah" is ROBOT. I know, I know. It sounds and looks nothing like robot, but I promise you that it is robot to him.

I'm working under the assumption that he is "suffering" from third child syndrome on top of the fact that he is a boy (boys typically develop speech later than girls). Right now, he is surrounded by two parents and two older siblings who understand everything he needs and wants before he has to express it. We anticipate everything for him. His siblings speak for him. So he's being a lazy ass. Sigh.

See, if he were my first child, I would be freaked out of my mind right now. I would be calling up the specialists, asking them what is wrong with him and what I've done wrong. But he is my third child. This is not to say that I love or care about him less than my first or second. It simply means that I have come a long way as a mom.

In the beginning of motherhood, I was filled with such insecurities. I worried about everything. Is he eating enough? Is he pooping enough? Is his poop supposed to be that color? Does he have a low-grade, mild, or high fever? Why does his face turn so purple when he cries? Why does he like one boob better than the other? Has one of my boobs gone bad?

I truly believe that one BECOMES a mom. When they hand you that baby in that fated delivery room, you don't just automatically become a mom then. You don't know which way is up from down then. It takes time. It takes time to figure things out. To figure your kid(s) out. To figure yourself out. And sooner or later, it happens. You "get" everything about them. You know when something is wrong and when something is right and no piece of paper with some arbitrary numbers is going to tell you otherwise. But until you get there, it's OK to freak. It's OK to ask questions and to be unsure. Just know that when you know, you know. You actually start to know your kids better than you know yourself. You know things about your kids in the pit of your heart.

So anyway, I'm just going to go with the flow and call it an "awah" because it's all good. And I "get" him. I really do.