I was lucky enough to receive some wonderful Hambly products for being on AMM DT. This is a two layered LO.

The journaling is on the bottom and says:

To the naked eye, this looks like a toy. A little dinosaur.

But, to me, it’s so much more than that.

When the doctor first told us that he was concerned about how little you spoke, I didn’t really feel as worried as he seemed to. Six months later, when you were still not putting two words together, we agreed to get you evaluated, just in case.

There were many things the evaluator said but one of them stuck with me much more than others. She asked me if you had any imaginative play. Did you use any objects and have them interact with each other. Did you feed a baby doll? Did you make the farm animals talk to each other?

We had to admit, you didn’t.

Sometimes, you’d make your dinosaurs roar. But that was the extent of your imaginative play. That’s when I officially started getting worried. Maybe there really was something wrong with you. Maybe it wasn’t all going to be okay.

That evaluation brought on another and the next thing we knew, you were in speech therapy. The word explosion took a while to come and the articulation still isn’t there, but a few weeks after therapy started, I was sitting on the couch and saw you feeding your dinosaur. You gave it a spoon of food. You named them the Mommy dinosaur and the Baby dinosaur. Next thing I know, your toys were interacting with each other. Not only did you have imaginative play, your whole world became imaginative play.

That’s the moment I knew we were going to be okay. I knew that your speech may take a while longer and maybe you’d need more therapy for the articulation, but there really was nothing wrong with you. You are just taking longer to express yourself than other little boys your age seem to. And that’s perfectly fine, my little one.

Your plastic dinosaurs are spread all over our house. To visitors, they are colorful toys. To me, they are reminders that everything will be all right.