Baby Signs

I have been doing Baby Signs with Annabelle since she was about four months old. (I know, we started a little early.) Mostly we signed just "hi", "momma" and "daddy", sometimes "thank you", and occasionally "cat" or "banana" or some others.

She caught on to waving "hi" pretty quickly because she learned that she got a return wave every time. But the others have been a long time in coming... about a week ago I signed "hat" and she immediately copied me. I was shocked. So I signed "more" and she basically ignored me and went back to playing with her puzzle. I said, "hat" and she signed it again. I was SO pleased that it seemed to stick and thought that I'd come back to it later.

Then a couple days ago I was nursing her and she tried to roll off the boppy after only nursing on one side so I said, "Hey, there's more!" She pulled both hands up in front of her face and signed, "more". I was so surprised and proud of her that I kept hugging her over and over while we signed "more" again and again and again.

Since then we sign "more" and "hat" regularly, but I'm not sure she gets the meaning of the signs. Though I also recently made up a sign for nursing and she clearly recognizes the meaning of that sign.

It seems like a lot of toddlers her age are saying a lot of words. Annabelle says, "Mama" but that's about it. She babbles a LOT and enjoys conversations with me but there are no actual words being used on her side. When I expressed concern to Dave about her falling behind in the verbal development department he reminded me of her habit to plateau developmentally and then at the last second explode and rush forward, passing up her peers in the meantime.

Stay tuned.