Communication is key

So I haven't written on here in what seems like forever. I thought I'd take the time to sit down and write about one thing this morning.
Speech Therapy!!!!!!
For those of you who don't know Ryan has been in speech therapy since August of last year. He was diagnosed with some stem behavior and a speech delay. Since August he's been seen twice a month here at home by his therapist, Pam. Pam is a great lady, and has been doing this for years. It took us a few appointments to get things going, but since then we've all worked hard to improve Ryan's speech.
Around the Christmas holidays is when we got our first breakthrough, Ryan actually started saying the sounds of almost every letter in the alphabet. This was a huge improvement over anything we had heard him try before then. I owe a lot to the work Pam did, and Nick and I did. I also found a you tube channel that focuses on the phonic sounds of every letter in the alphabet, and Ryan loves that channel.
Yes I will brag and say he's an extremely smart boy who knows how to use my iPhone almost as well as me. He knows what apps are his to play with and he also knows he can only play with the phone if mommy or daddy say so. He learns quickly and that makes me so happy, because we love trying to teach him new things.
He's now sounding out each letter to simple words like cat, car, pig, duck, dog. He's also gotten to the point were he will say dada and mama, which is huge in our world. He's also learned several words in sign language that help him communicate even more with us. These breakthroughs are important because it shows how smart he is and that he can do it with lots of hard work on all our parts. Not a day goes by that Nick and I don't work with him on words and sounds, we know that's what needs to be done in order for him to continue learning.
The biggest hurdle we face is finding a proper daycare/preschool.
Right now he goes twice a week to Lakeview for preschool. He's happy there most of the time and has sweet teachers, and we have signed him up for the fall to go four days a week. This preschool is a great choice, and we are so thankful he goes there, but he needs more help full time with the speech, and that requires a special preschool.
In the Auburn/Opelika area one daycare is specially suited for children like Ryan, and it appears they may be shutting their doors due to lack of funding. This makes me so sad, because so many other parents are also waiting for their child to be accepted to this school. We would love to be able to enroll Ryan in The Little Tree, and honestly we're hoping they will find a way to stay open because for Ryan and many other children speech therapy is essential.
So it feels good to really sit down and write about this, a lot of people really don't know about this, and I feel that I needed to sit down and just "talk" about it. Keep Ryan in your prayers, because he's still learning, and we pray that he continues to grow and learn.