Are these the flood gates?

This is Parker feeding the ducks and geese. The ones you see are actually goslings. Conner, Parker and I fed them plenty of bread and year old animal cookies that had never been opened. I'm not sure who ate more (bread). The ducks or Parker. Conner and I were having a ball tossing crumbs into the water and watching the appreciative ducks gobble them up. I looked down to see what Parker thought of the whole thing and he had both cheeks stuffed full and a long piece of bread sticking out of his mouth!! Conner and I fed the ducks and Parker fed himself! I guess he figured it was snack time! He loves nothing better than food and drink, that Parker! He was so cute. I tried so hard to get him to thow the ducks some bread, but he held it tight and clutched his little fist close to protect his snack!

Even though he didn't want to part with any bread to feed the ducks, Parker did something amazing!!! I was doing my usual "the whole day is a speech lesson" drill and pointing to the ducks and saying, "Duck!! Duck!! Quack-quack!!" over and over again. And low and behold, the child said, "duck!" a few times and "quack-quack" too! I was so excited! That was the first time he'd seen real ducks up close and the first time he'd repeated something I said so...easily? We had to repeat "get down" and "all done" hundreds of times before he said them. But he said, "duck" and "quack quack" right away.

THEN!! We went on a golf cart ride and everytime the cart would stop Parker would say, "Go!" Holy cow! The child is talking! Not only that, but he looked at ME and said, "Go!" This is a very good thing.


THEN! We were reading a book that had a picture of a cow in it and I said, "Cow! Moooooo!" A few pages later there was a picture of that same cow but from a different angle and with a different background and Parker said, "Mooooo!" :D

Fuel for Hope.