Prayers *finally* (sort of) answered

Collin got up early today before church, and took a long nap this afternoon. We only woke him up from the nap for a diaper change before getting Ivy & Andrew ready for bed. After the diaper change, Collin was excited to be awake, but obviously couldn't stay up and play or watch a movie like he was asking for since he needs to go to school tomorrow. After many failed attempts at getting him to eat or drink anything before getting ready for bed again, I sat w/him on the rocker in his room & just sat there talking to him. He really doesn't like rocking in the chair, just likes to sit still on my lap(I chalk it up to his autism) I just talked about things like what happened this weekend, what's going on tomorrow. Collin did an amazing thing! He started to *try* to talk in long sentences to me. It was all babble, so I didn't understand a word of it, but I kept telling him about I like him talking to me & using his words. I actually let Collin do most of the talking since this is such a rare thing. He talked to me probably a good 3-4 minutes before I had to put him in bed so he could go back to sleep. It was so hard not to cry listening to him babbling to me. He obviously felt he had something to say to me and was trying to express himself which is such a hard thing for him to do, more so than a typical child.

This is something we've prayed for, for so long: to be able to have a 2 way conversation w/Collin! I can't tell you how many times we prayed just to get Collin to talk a year ago--too many too count(multiple times per day). It's such a relief and comfort to know our prayers are really being answered. I admit there have been several times I've wondered if Heavenly Father is really listening or paying attention to our little family? I feel like lately, in our prayers besides thanking for the typical things, that it's more asking for things than anything else. But at the same time, I feel like we sure could use all the blessings we can get and why shouldn't we ask for things we need that are completely out of our hands after all we've done?

I would have loved to know what Collin was trying to say, but at this point, I'll take what I can get.