Baby Signs

Ethan has really caught on to baby sign language lately and it has made our lives so much easier. Instead of tantrums we now see a smiling little boy looking up at us with big blue eyes and making the sign for "milk". I can't even describe the difference it can make when I don't have to guess what he wants or is trying to communicate to me. The "guess and check" method is tiring for both of us. He'd cry and I would try to fix the problem by handing him his sippy cup, a snack, change his diaper, give him a toy, etc. while he frantically shook his head No until I hit upon the answer. Talk about exhausting for both of us when this process repeats itself 10 times a day.

His first sign was "more" followed quickly by "milk". He has a favorite picture board book and loves to look at it and show me all the signs he knows. So far here's the list:

More
Milk
Kitty
Doggy
Shoes
Eat
Ball
Fish

Here he is doing the sign for Kitty because he was excited to see our cat Boo:


We're working on:
Baby
Please
Thank You
Flower
Cracker
Car
Pig

He usually repeats a sign when I show it to him but sometimes it takes awhile before he uses it on his own. I'm exhausting my memory from when we did this with Grace so I'm going to have to look up some more signs for him.

In addition to signing he's really trying to say the words as well. That's the whole point of course, but it's exciting nonetheless! Here's his small vocabulary of words:

Mama
Dada
Ball
Fish
Kitty
This