ALL DONE, and just getting started!

We are 2 weeks into food now, and she is really getting the hang of it. This morning, I was having tea and a muffin quickly before I fixed "breakfast" for my daughter (she had already had one feeding before that, I was not being a mean mommy). I looked over at her after I took my first bite and she was making chewing motions with her cute little mouth. I dropped everything and fixed her some rice cereal with apple. As I put her in her highchair she smiled wide and kept making the chewing motion with her mouth! I feel like we had our first conversation and I am calling that her first "word/gesture". She is not even 5 months old, yet I believe she was both mimicking my face and trying to tell me she was hungry. This is a child who only cries when something is truly wrong, so maybe she is finding other ways to make herself heard!

So, after seeing her performance this morning, I decided even though it will be a while until I truly see her signing back to me, it's time to introduce one more sign. So, when we were done with our cereal, muffin and tea and before I took her out of her highchair, I signed "ALL-DONE" and I will continue to do that. I will not only sign it after we eat, but after a movie, after playtime, after a bottle, and on and on. That is how baby signers learn to apply their signs to different scenarios.

Just as we continue to use our entire English vocabulary when speaking to our children, a baby learning sign language should be exposed to the full vocabulary of sign language. As for how it applies to baby signers only wishing to use some of the language, you can always feel free to begin using signs as early as you like. It's the way you reinforce those signs that shape the learning process.

First cold

Well, my daughter got her first cold over the weekend. What a sad state she is in. Can't blow her nose properly, can't take meds, just has to stick it out and get lots of hugs from mommy and daddy. This is one of those times when I wish she could already use signs to tell me what's wrong. She has been fussy all day, and all I can do is guess that it's due to the discomfort of having a cold. So, until she is abe to begin using signs such as "HURT" and "MOMMY" I'll have to guess whether her crying is trying to tell me she is in pain, or that she just wants another hug. It's times like this that a new mommy adds to the list of words she wants to teach her baby!

Time for FOOD!

We started our daughter on cereal this past week and after a few days she is starting to really enjoy it. This is the perfect time to introduce a new sign! Every time we sit down to eat I make sure and use the sign "EAT". She is not big enough to sit in the high chair yet, although that will be the next big introduction for her, so we use a small chair called a BUMBO. If you've never seen one, check them out. They are fantastic for helping little ones learn to sit up and it is coming in very handy now that we are beginning to feed her with a spoon. You can buy an attachable tray to go on the front of it which is coming in very handy lately. The other thing I really like about BUMBO is that it frees up my hands to sign to her. So, she is getting to practice sitting up and watching mommy's hands at eye level. When it is dinner time, I always put some music on, sit her in the BUMBO, and begin signing "EAT" with a very enthusiastic look on my face. She gets very excited! Soon we will move on to oatmeal from rice cereal, big things happening in my house these days!

Talk to me, baby!

Today is my daughter's 4 month birthday! (I promise to stop doing that at 6 months) Over the past 2 weeks she has started waking around 1:30am for a feeding. Before that, she was sleeping between 9-12 hours a night without waking at all. All of a sudden she is starving in the middle of the night and I'm not sure what changed. It's times like this that I wish I could talk to her about how she is feeling. I can't wait until she is able to start signing even the most basic of words so I can figure out what she is thinking. Even if she could sign "MOMMY", "FOOD", or "DIAPER" I could better care for her needs. As for now, it's still a guessing game in my tired haze in the middle of the night. I'll continue to wander down the stairs to feed, change, and comfort my daughter and wait for the day that she can let me know exactly what she needs, or at least point me in the right direction.