The Sweetest Sound I Know

Little girls giggles and high pitched squeals. These were the sounds our days were made of …

Oh how I wanted her voice to be the soundtrack of my life, but it wasn’t happening. Why isn’t she talking? Is this normal? I have two teenagers and can’t remember what is normal. Is it because she’s our third child? Why isn’t our bribery and insistance working??

“Oh don’t worry, she’ll talk.” “Einstein didn’t talk until he was 5.” “Just wait ’til she won’t stop talking! Then you’ll be thankful for these days.”

Their words were  meant to be encouraging. And sometimes they helped to stretch our patience as we waited for our little girl to say simple yet precious words like “Daddy” and “bye-bye”.

In October 2009, we adopted Aster from Ethiopia. In August 2011, as she was heading toward her 3-year-old birthday, Aster was diagnosed with a severe speech disorder called Apraxia.

In the midst my deep sorrow over my fathers’s death, the joy of my book release and the heart-shattering shock about my little girl, all I wanted to hear was the soothing sound of my daughter’s precious little voice.

But Aster could barely say five words, and those were very hard to understand. It was determined that she could understand almost everything, but Aster’s mental planning paths weren’t connecting between her brain and her mouth, and no one knew why.

We’ve scheduled countless assessments, a brain MRI, hearing tests and more. And now after 10 months of speech therapy two times each week, we are celebrating an amazing milestone. Look how far God has brought our sweet and beautiful girl!

Although Aster still has days where she hardly says a thing, when she is chatty, she can say at least 50 words now! And her whole alphabet. She is super excited about her newest accomplishment – she can count up to 10!

We are so proud of how hard our girl is working that smart mind of hers, creating paths in her brain  and building weak muscles in her mouth. And we’re over the top thankful for each little step of progress she makes. If you’d like to see just how far she’s come, the first time she EVER talked on camera was March 4, 2012. Here is that video:

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”– 1 Corinthians 2:9