The peaks and valleys of speech delays

Lately, it feels more like a deep, dark, endless abyss than just a valley.  Melodramatic, I know, but some days seem more challenging than others.  And we've had a lot of those recently.  Cadence has been in speech therapy since her last surgery over a year ago.  One of our biggest "leaps" was when she finally started to initiate words on her.  This was a very welcome change from the previous behavior of "point, whine, grunt, cry" when she wanted something.  Now, she talks all day!  I know that she is forming the words in her little brain and they are working themselves over her tongue and out of her mouth, but it just isn't coming together.  I probably understand about 10% of what she says the first time she says it.  And she talks a lot!  Which means that I spend about 90% of my time with her desperately trying to figure out what she is saying.  It's like language immersion into toddlerese.  It can be exhausting.  Truly exhausting. 

An example of what happens about 27 times a day:  Cadence points towards the front of the house and says "uck".  I say "You want the window open?  You want to go outside?  Is there a bird outside?  An airplane?  Should we go look at some flowers?  Can you say it again?  I don't understand."  Granted, she takes most of it in stride.  But as you can imagine, there is often varying degrees on frustration on everybody's part.  Most days I know it will get better.  I know that she will be intelligible when she goes to college.  I know that I need patience... something that has NEVER come easy to me!  Is it too much to ask to know what's going on in my little girl's head?  Of course, I have a feeling I'll be saying this in about 4 years regarding Sierra!  Maybe I should just be content with the fact that Cadence is at least sharing with me right now rather than worrying about understanding it!

Regardless of what she says, doesn't say, what is comprehensible or not,

this little girl is surrounded by love!