Where does the time go? Could it be that it was already three years ago that the phone rang in our hotel room in Nikko, Japan and we learned that we were grandparents? What an exciting moment that was! Andrew David Richard Graham had been born to our daughter, Melaina, and her husband, Aaron.

Almost exactly two years later, Drew’s baby sister, Jami-Lee Marie, entered the world making shared birthday parties a definite possibility. This time, instead of being half way around the world, I was in the delivery room! Another amazing memory!

Melaina is no stranger to joint birthday parties. For several years, she and her brother, Nathan, just eleven months younger than her, shared their parties. They had the same friends and until they were old enough to want sleepovers, it made perfect sense. We usually held the party close to Melaina’s birthday at the end of August because we were often away from home for Nathan’s in July. He turned six in the Yukon, seven on PEI, and nine in California.

Jami-Lee’s birthday was on Thursday and Drew’s is today. We had their party yesterday. Uncle Nathan came down from Edmonton, their other grandma was here as were their Auntie Dani and her family and several friends from their church. Drew was especially delighted with his Thomas the Tank Engine cake.

Trains are Drew’s passion these days. I’ve had to learn the names of all his engines; Thomas, James, Spencer, and Percy. We added Henry to the collection yesterday. Each day while we’re here, we lay out his wooden tracks and spend lots of time playing trains. I also have a special folder of train photos on my laptop just for Drew. In spite of his phonological disorder, his speech is improving steadily and he has no problem asking to look at the train pictures. He even knows exactly which icon to point to on my desktop!

Jami-Lee is walking now and climbing, climbing, climbing! She’s definitely her mother’s daughter in that respect. I remember finding Melaina perched in various spots where little ones ought not to be and she’s the child who escaped serious injury when she climbed the drawers of her dresser and it fell over on her! Jami was a bit overwhelmed by the number of people crowded into her small livingroom and spent much of the party on my lap. What a lucky Gram I am! She loved opening gifts and was especially thrilled by the toy piano her mommy and daddy gave her. Perhaps she’s also inherited Melaina’s musical talent. Only time will tell.

One of the first things we wanted to do when we got back from our recent trip to Japan was to make another trip; this time to Calgary to see the grandchildren that we hadn’t seen since Christmas! After just 8 nights in our own bed, off we went and what fun we had.

It’s amazing how much young children change in such a short time. At just 10 1/2 months old, Jami-Lee is standing on her own and taking those first tentative steps!

Even more exciting is the change in Drew’s speech, however. Diagnosed with a severe phonological disorder in early January, he hasn’t started formal speech therapy yet but Melaina has been working with him every day and he’s making wonderful progress! He still has a long way to go but not only is he saying lots of words more clearly than before, he’s also started putting them together into 2 and 3 word phrases. It was such a delight to hear him shout out “Grandpa’s turn”, “Gram’s turn” and “Drew’s turn” as we slid down the slide at the playground. He still has trouble with the G sound at the beginning of our names, but it was quite clear what he was saying.

Now we’re back home again. We’ll be sleeping in our own bed tonight but only for three nights this time! We’re off to a church board retreat on Friday. As someone at my Sunday School board meeting said tonight, those DeBocks just never stay home!

When our grandson, Drew, began calling me Am at 15 months of age, it was cute. Endearing, in fact. As time went by, however, and his speech didn’t develop as it ought to, we all became concerned. He’s a bright little boy. At 32 months, he can identify all the upper case letters, knows his colours and shapes, and clearly has a great memory and excellent reasoning skills but his speech is almost unintelligible. Yesterday, we found out why.

Melaina cried when she read the diagnosis; severe phonological disorder. It breaks a mother’s heart to learn that there’s something wrong with her child and the name sounds so harsh. This is really the end of one journey and the beginning of another. The road to diagnosis involved three hearing assessments and a speech assessment as well as lots of careful observation and documentation on Melaina and Aaron’s part. After two inconclusive hearing assessments, Drew passed the third with flying colours eliminating that as a possible cause. An appointment with a speech pathologist in early December led to the final diagnosis.

As in Drew’s case, the cause of phonological disorder is often unknown. Children with the disorder substitute, leave off, or change sounds making their speech difficult or impossible to understand. When Drew talks, he drops the first sound or syllable off almost every word. Dog becomes og, book is ook and so on. Though he’s able to produce all of the sounds,  he can’t get the words to come out whole. That’s because this is essentially a transmission problem. In simple terms, the message isn’t getting from his brain to his mouth correctly.

Fortunately, most children respond well to intervention and so begins the second journey. Melaina and Aaron will attend a parent session sometime in the next few weeks and then speech therapy will begin. It probably won’t be a quick fix but with lots of hard work, we should begin to see progress. We’re hoping that the fact that Drew was diagnosed at such a young age is in his favour.

I can’t wait to hear him call me Gram!