More Baby-Sign News

Kittyboy has the sign of the cross ALMOST down pat, except he does it backwards (the Catholic way). Obviously that's because he's following the movements of our hands as if in a mirror, so that'll straighten out with time. We were eating in a restaurant with friends once shortly after he'd started doing it regularly, and I forgot to cross myself before eating. He looked at me, said "Mm!" and crossed himself. He then was so taken with his first taste of fried okra that he crossed himself before every bite. Books that have icons on the front, he points at and crosses himself. The little photo album in which I have his icon cards is getting beat up and will need replacing at some point. Signing for Jesus is going nowhere, though he may have put together that the Baby in Mary's arms is the same person as the grown-up man by the same name, because when I point out a picture as Jesus, he signs Baby. That's partially owing to me arranging his icons in the photo album as diptychs, where the Theotokos and Child (Mary and Jesus) on one side are directly opposite the one of Jesus as a man. The Baby's name is Jesus, the man's name is Jesus, so when he does sign, he does Baby for both. We're putting the pieces together, albeit sort of backwards. Signing for Mary, he has figured out, although it's very close to the way he signs Cat, so if you're in a store and he does it, it might be that he saw a cat on something, or it might be that you're passing the Nativity displays. Context is key. Joseph doesn't need a sign - after I'd spent some time sitting with him at the manger scene going over "Jesus - Mary - Jesus - Mary", he picked up Joseph and SAID "Dadd-n!" (Daddy).
Horse and Cow we're also seeing, though he doesn't differentiate between the two. And both are very close to Hat. He stood by a set of shelves by the door and pointed, then put his fist up to his head. I guessed, "Hat? You want your hat?" because he does have a favorite hat he likes to wear around the house sometimes. He put his hand down, and then did it again. "Horse?" He turned and pulled the donkey from the manger scene out from behind the shelves. We've been calling it a horse because, well, it LOOKS like a horse, and when I called it a donkey, he signed Dog (doggie). Angels are still Birds, which I suppose follows a logic similar to signing Baby for Jesus.
I can't imagine what people did with really late talkers before they started sign language with babies. Were it not for Toilet (diaper change), More, Eat/Drink, and Night-Night, life would be sooo much more complicated than it is. With signs, we'll be able to start toilet-training without him necessarily talking yet, as soon as we get the skill of pulling underwear up and down. If we were waiting for him to talk, I have no idea WHEN we'd be starting. And he's learning the basics, the name for things, and how language is used, NOW, so that however late he talks, he'll already know all that.
Oh, and just now I may have seen him sign Jesus (he'd brought me the photo album to look at), and it's sort of a vague mid-level sign he does for a lot of things. A LOT of signs look like each other. But it's a start!

A New Sign

This morning in church, I got a humbling, amazing, wonderful surprise. We have been helping our son, hand over hand, to make the sign of the cross since the day he came home from the hospital (literally, because there was a church service we went to the evening of the day he came home). He's gotten to where he will lift his hand to his head if you tell him to cross himself, but nothing further, and of course you don't expect someone not yet two to know when to do that during the service WITHOUT prompting.
This morning, however, when Father said "Thoxa Patri ke Io ke Ayiou Pnevmati" (Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, in Greek) Kittyboy immediately looked up from his book and moved his hand from his forehead to his waist, twice. He did it again the next time. And the next. And for even more shock value, he did it when Father said that in English, too. He even did it a couple times at other points where you're supposed to cross yourself that aren't as obvious - the benefit of a service that repeats things again and again. So he IS already aware somewhat of the pattern of what happens when. Father says this, this, and this, and then we do THIS.
On the one hand, he's been in church almost every Sunday since he was three months old, and of course the basic service never changes - on the other hand, he's not yet two. NOT - YET - TWO.
So not only does he have the up-down part covered, he knows when we do it! All we have to teach him now is the right-left. It IS a rather complicated sign when most baby-signs are one motion.
What a very aware little boy we have. This is the latest in a long list of things inspiring awe and gratitude:
He couldn't drink without thickener when he came home, but has taken Communion all this time without any issues whatsoever.
Church was the first place he slept happily and without trouble - and sometimes even without weight on top of him.
Church was the first place he would be quietly and calmly awake (when he first came home, THE ONLY place - many Sundays I wanted to move into the basement).
It was also the first place he signed something spontaneously - "More".
And icons are his friends. He waves hello at them.
Sometime last year, a visiting priest's wife complimented me on how quiet my baby was in church. Without going into details about how NOT-quiet and UN-calm he was at home, I just said that church was always where he was most relaxed, and she said without hesitation, "That is because he feels the angels!"
Never underestimate the ability of children to comprehend, experience and appreciate that which is unseen. They know far more than we do.

more signing fun

Kittyboy has now added bird and baby to his vocabulary. Apparently the best strategy for getting him to sign is to just sign anything we can think of, willy-nilly, and he'll pick up SOMETHING. Added to his farm is a chicken, and a horse. Chicken is bird, and horse is the next one I'll start doing regularly. Have to get horse right, since he kept telling me this morning in church that St. George is riding a doggie. Everything with ears and four legs now falls into the category of kitty or doggie, most often doggie (although he told me that Spot the Target dog is a kitty - who knew!).

There was a baby behind us in church, and he kept pointing at it, "mming" and signing baby. That was cute.

And I've created a monster, what with pointing out "Look, there's Daddy! See Daddy?" every time Husband appears during the service. As an acolyte, Husband pops in and out regularly, and before Kittyboy started saying Daddy, I kept pointing out Daddy every time he appeared. So now, every time he sees Daddy during church, he SAYS, "Ndad-ndy! Ndad-ndy! Ndad-ndy! Ndad-ndy!" and gets loud about it. I kept whispering, "Yes, and Daddy says SHH. Daddy says we're being quiet and listening now. Daddy says you need to learn how to whisper."

signing fun

Just investigated the Tractor Supply Company store near Meijer. Farming stores have the bestest toys! Kittyboy has a kitty and a doggie (specifically a Bernese Mountain dog), chosen from a wide variety of molded plastic animals. That's part of what I love about farm stores' toy sections, the realistic and even breed-specific animals. You can choose between an Angus, Brahman, or Charolais bull for your farm, and for dogs they had dalmations, Bernese, labs, and a couple others. So we got a yellow tabby cat and a Bernese Mountain dog, and over the weekend I'll figure out what other animal he's most likely to encounter in books, learn the sign for it, and get one of those. Then we'll play "What's this?" going through kitty, doggie, and the new critter. His farm will expand as he learns the signs for the animals.

We're working on combining Please with other signs, so that it's actually a request. Right now he signs Please whenever he wants ANYTHING, but without a sign to tell you for what he is saying Please. So we're working on Eat Please, Drink Please, Read Please. His current method of saying that he wants to read a book is to throw it in my lap while signing Please, and if I'm in the middle of something he starts commanding, loudly, "MMMM! MMMM!" and if that doesn't work, will start hitting my leg with the book. It escalates pretty steadily. And it gets old, FAST, especially since I often say "Wait" just out of principle to try and teach him to wait, even a moment or so, for what he wants. So now instead of Wait, I ask him, "Please what?" and sign Book/Read. Ideally, he will start phrasing requests for specifically what he wants, or the sign closest to what he wants, and it would cut down on the frustration for both of us.

Oh, and Janna SL (the new one, speech/language) is helping us start PECS, Picture Exchange Communication System. We're trying to get him to choose between things, like having a picture of bubbles and a picture of a book, and whichever he picks is what we do.

And he'll talk eventually. Really, he will!