Parallel Play

JoJo enjoys having Stelly, who he calls (signs) "girl," come over to play, but he still spends much of their time together ignoring her.

Some Day

This toy has really piqued the boy's interest in this whole walking business, but why would he want to let go?

The Ideal Dispenser

This is as far as we've gotten on our quest for the perfect way to serve Cheerios outside of the high chair. If the container is more shallow, it spills its contents; if it is deeper, he can't reach the bottom; and if the hole is smaller, the container becomes a game to extract every Cheerio without eating any. I have yet to figure the kid out, but for now we have a serviceable dispenser, at least.

Pleasantly Making a Mess

Josiah spreads joy and cheerios throughout the world.

"Up! Up! Up!"

(Actually, Josiah says, "Ah! Ah! Ah!")

One more old window shot

Hmm... Why is it snowing in April?

Our Verdict

As you may know if you've been reading this blog for the past 6 months, we decided to try baby sign language with Josiah. We started with the basics, but we kept learning and adding more signs as he progressed. Now that we have gone much further down this path we are positively thrilled with the result so far. We used some flash cards, as well as Baby Signing Time and Signing Time, all of which Josiah loved, and after several long months we started ticking off the signs. Fast forward to now, and we can't imagine not signing. Josiah would be a different child for sure. He memorizes signs from his videos even if he doesn't know what they mean. He loved learning the colors of the rainbow, and can sign green, etc. if you ask him to, even though he can't identify colors on his own yet. All told, we're right at 165 signs now, and trying to figure out which direction to head next. We only have two Signing Time videos, so we'll probably look there.

Josiah loves being able to comment on his world. He tunes in to a dog's bark or the noise of an airplane in the distance and starts signing the word like crazy. He's less likely to sign about "important" things, like his needs and wants, but he'll usually respond if I ask him what he wants. I guess most toddlers are like that when they learn to talk too, though. Signing has been different from our expectations in a few ways. First, I never thought he'd catch on so quickly and learn so many signs by 15 months. It hasn't been hard for me, because until now I've been able to learn new signs either on the videos or by looking them up online one or two at a time. On the flip side though, I would have thought that if we had 165 signs, we'd be communicating a lot more than we are. I've since learned that the same applies to learning to talk, but even if Josiah understands a word and can produce it, he might not use it when it would help. His first reflex is often still to start crying when he wants something, although signing is helpful in figuring out what's wrong. He's just barely starting to sign mini sentences, like "hear bird," "walk stroller," and "milk, please." If an adult had a vocabulary of 165 words, he'd be doing a lot more than that with them. It's still worth it, just different than I'd expected.

The amazing part is, though, that Josiah is not way above average for kids whose parents keep introducing new signs. The communication we have could be anyone's. Every baby is different, but I'm gathering that Josiah is fairly typical. We've enjoyed this so much that we wanted to update you on our progress and encourage you to think about it for your kids. We haven't been super zealous to teach Josiah, and we were not even very faithful at remembering to sign at the beginning. It did come more naturally as we went along. When we added the flashcards and Signing Time DVD's, he really took off, without much effort on our part. (He watches Signing Time instead of Baby Einstein, so it's not that expensive. A lot of kids have a couple Baby Einstein DVD's.) So, signing is not that hard, and the dividends are great! What do you think?

By the way, the picture is Josiah just finishing his sign for grass as he sees it out the window.

Cheater!

What's this like if I do it from here? Well, at least I don't have to stand.