Baby Signing

Okay, technically the title up there should read Understanding Vague Hand Signals Your Baby Shows You, but for the sake of simplicity I'll stick with Baby Signing! This is an area of motherhood that I bravely tried- for about a week- before giving up when Blake was around a year old.

I assumed we had started signing with him far too late for him to pick up on any of it, and after not seeing any kind of reaction from him I just decided to forget it! I just was not all about tapping my fingers in a W shape up against my cheek every time I ran the faucet or drank from a glass! ( That's the sign for water, in case you were wondering.)

Blake has been very verbal  pretty much since he started babbling. He's been speaking in 2-3 word sentences for probably close to 3 months, and it's really great being able to communicate with him better. But there are still lots of times that he babbles off a sentence or too, looks expectantly up at me, and I have no clue what he wants!!


So during one frustrating meal time where Blake had said something completely understandable to him and I had said "What do you neeeed?" twelve times, only to have him throw his head back in a wail and smack the highchair tray....I signed the word More- out of complete desperation. "Do you want more? More chicken? More ranch?"

And out of nowhere...Blake signed the exact same thing I had! It was like something just clicked (this is where you can hear angelic voices singing if you listen closely...wink**) and we were communicating on a completely different, and totally awesome level.

Since then, we've learned Please and All Done...which for the most part covers all our bases! I wouldn't say we're exactly dead-on with our signing accuracy, but even if our signing isn't quite legit...we get each other.  And that's all that matters to me!

The REAL sign for Please:

source: survival4moms.com




And Blake's sign for Please:

So if you ever hear Blake saying Peas! Peas! , and he appears to be scratching his armpits....you can bet he's asking you for something (and it's not little round, green veggies!)