New Tricks

It’s been a little while, okay a looooong while, since I’ve updated on Piper’s signing skills.  Truth be told, until about 6 or 8 weeks ago, we kind of stalled.  Both us learning new signs to teach her, and her being willing to do the ones we did.  Frankly, I’m fairly convinced that it was due to her focusing her efforts on oral motor and gross motor skills instead, and didn’t have the desire (or time) to focus on it.

Starting when she was about 6 months old (four months adjusted), she was signing Mom, dog, hungry, milk, and the occasional Dad.

She has recently added eat, more, silly, pretty, and does Dad consistently. 

“Eat” she did for the first time at lunch today.  She was very impressed with herself.  “Silly” she did for the first time the other night when Luke was trying to get her settled down enough to go to bed.  I was watching a video from someone else’s blog on my laptop, and Luke had Piper in the rocker a few feet away.  Apparently me watching the video was hilarious.  We couldn’t figure out what she was doing (since she hadn’t done that one before), but realized that she was signing “Mommy silly!” over and over and over again.  Once I finally said out loud “Mommy silly?” she stopped, and started clapping and doing her excited dance.  And then she went to sleep.   “Pretty” she usually reserves for blankets and the like at the store, usually when she likes the feel.  She doesn’t do it often, but I think that it’s almost a substitute for “like”, but only for textile-ish items.  Fashionista?  Maybe. 

Almost the funniest one, though, was when she started signing for the audiologists at our visit a couple weeks ago.  She started signing “More Doggy” to the ladies because she wanted to see the little jumping, barking dog jump and bark again.  The lady looked at her, asked if she was asking for more, and Piper got all excited.  They ended up playing the dumb dog about a half dozen more times because she kept asking for it.  Silly kid.  I was pretty impressed that they were able to decode Piper’s approximations; if you know what you’re looking at, it’s fairly easy to see.  But especially when she’s saying two words together, the signs kind of meld into each other.  And if they’re anywhere near her mouth, her hand usually ends up in her mouth. 

So what are we working on next?  “Drink”, I think, is coming now that she has the honey bear.  She seems really close, and she definitely knows the word when we say it.  It’d be a nice one to have down before the hot weather gets here this summer.  I’d really like her to do “grandma” and “grandpa”, just because, well, I’m pretty sure that no one could tell her no if she did it.  We’re learning “go” and “car”, too; “go” is easier to conceive, though, and I think it’ll come sooner than “car”.  Although now that the weather is brightening up, we occasionally see cars on the street and talk about them.  We’ll see.  “Diaper” and “bath” we’ve been working on for a little while. 

The one I want her to learn the most, though, is “1” for her birthday.  Her little short-and-stubby fingers would be so cute!  She’s getting pretty close, but that finger isolation business is a hard skill to learn!

I was flipping through my pictures trying to find some of her signing, and low-and-behold, the only sign I could find was “doggy”.  Over and over and over again.  Not “Mommy”, nope no way-- “doggy”…  <<sigh>>…