Communication

August 2010
At almost 14 months Amelia is trying hard to communicate with us by watching our hands and trying to imitate our signs. I made a list of the ones I have actually seen her do and there are about 20 of them by now. Of course there is “eat, more, milk, mom, dad, up and hat”, but she’s signing so many more now, such as “flower, bird, cat, dog, fan, cold and butterfly”. Usually the signs are just random, which means she is “babbling” with her hands, but she is beginning to do more than just imitate and has signed “eat” or “milk” when she’s hungry. The easiest way to teach her more signs is when she is sitting in her highchair and we have both hands free to show her a picture or a toy and make the sign for her. She is very attentive and will sit for quite a while for these “lessons”. We have covered just about all the farm and zoo animals now and many toys and clothes, probably about 30 more signs. She loves it when I play “where is …?” with her and hide an object for her to look for. It’s such fun to see her brain develop in this way and I hope that we can keep a step ahead of her in learning sign language.
Amelia also seems to realize that we have to squeeze her bottles for her when she drinks, so she let’s know when we’ve stopped squeezing by growling at us. Or sometimes she’ll touch our hand to get our attention. It works!