She said "poo."

Emmi's little life has been filled with a lot of struggle, set backs, and of course HUGE accomplishments. At eighteen months old, we learned that Emmi was now profoundly deaf. Sometime in the previous six months, Emmi had gone from normal hearing to deaf. Shortly after her second birthday, Emmi received her first implant. She said her first word in record time. Of course, it was "NO." After that she didn't really progress. She babbled. Lots. But something wasn't right. Her therapists and I discussed soft palate issues. Something I long ago thought of and had Emmi tested for. The tests kept coming back negative, but I was never convinced. Finally, after years of pressing the issue, we discovered Emmi's soft palate was too short. Basically, she physically could not make many of the sounds. With the help of therapy, she is making approximations of the sounds. Which means, little by little, we are able to understand Emmi. After the second implant in September, Emmi's receptive and expressive language exploded. Two days ago she told me a story for the first time. A whole story. That I understood every bit of. Lots of words. Lots of sentences. It made me cry so hard. I was so happy. And the story, well it goes a little something like this.

Emmi was constipated. All morning. I left to go to the store, and when I came home she was on the floor crying. And stinking up the place. I took her to the bathroom. And finally, she pooed. A few minutes later, she came up to me, and this is what she said.

"My butt owie. It owie. Emmi owie. Emmi potty. Emmi POO POO potty. Butt sorry. Emmi happy."

That's right. I cried over a story about poo.