Signing

Going into pregnancy, I was a firm believer in the positive impact of sign language.  I've known sign language since I took a class when I was 5 or 6 and it's come in really useful throughout my life and I've even taught a few classes myself.  For this reason, I'd love to teach it to Baby Girl and was so excited to learn that it is something that is becoming trendy to teach babies to help them communicate!

However, once Baby Girl was born, I got a little lax about working on sign language with her.  It seemed like I was always focusing on other pieces of development and keeping her safe and the priority to teach her sign langauge really sank to the bottom of the list.  While feeding her, it just wasn't easy to ask her "More?" between every bite.  So it's been REALLY sporadic.  I do typically sign "milk" to her when it's time for her to nurse (and now she comes crawling or running over the second I ask her if she wants milk), so that one we've had down for awhile and she's now starting to ask for it herself. 

This weekend, though, Baby Girl started signing both "more" and "all done" (well, she's done "all done" once or twice...but it was in context!).  I couldn't believe it!  The Hubby and I both use the signs just a few times a week, but apparently she's picked up on them and has started using them (the sitter refuses, so we know she isn't getting it there).  The best part is that her "more" isn't clapping, so we're able to tell the difference (many kids start out signing "more" by clapping, which gets confusing--do they want more or are they happy with themselves?  'Cause this kid claps whenever she hears a laugh track on TV, if someone says "yay", if she's done something she's proud of...you can see how it would be confusing for us!).  Her "all done" was pretty impressive, too!  I'm hoping we can get her to start using these all the time and maybe we can add in "water" or "juice" sometime!