My Little Chatterbox

OK, I am loving this stage.  It's hard to appreciate a preschooler's chatter fully until you've dealt with a speech delay.  Gabe has always been significantly behind on speech, but I waited until he was 3 and had to go through the schools to get tested, and their cutoffs for help are crazy low.  He scored in the 10th %, and you have to be below the 7th to get services, which is crazy.  I should have called Help Me Grow and had him tested earlier, but there's nothing I can do about it now.  Anyway, he's 3 1/2 now and finally speaking in pretty much full sentences.  He still leaves out connecting words like "with" and "for", but we're definitely getting there.  Even hearing "Mommy, I spilled my milk; I cleaning up my mess, Mommy,"  is music to my ears.  These days though, it's like a fountain has opened and all this knowledge is spilling out.  He can actually tell us what he knows now, so we can figure out what he does and doesn't understand.  It's wonderful.  All the way to my doctor's appointment the other day, we talked about the swimming pool being cleaned "but not yet" and Daddy taking him to the park when we got home and him having to go to Urgent Care when Tigger scratched his hand [we pass it on the way to my doc, and he always recognizes it by the cow jumping over the moon on top of the building], but it's "all better now.  Tigger don't scratch me anymore."  All day long it's "Daddy said..." or "Daddy told you..." or "Mommy said no?" or "Mommy said not yet."  I feel much better about letting him start preschool next year now that I know he can express himself fairly effectively, though that idea might have to be scrapped for financial reasons with me off work and having to finish school myself in the fall.  At least he seems more ready now though.  Now to work on concepts...