Just another quick blog in honor of the day; I wrote a long peice yesterday (please see below) especially for it, but I think the idea is that we are blogging on the actual day. Here's the theme of today's blog: Jeremy's "signing cluster"! Jeremy is 11 months old tomorrow, and just as his teacher said he would, he is suddenly doing a new sign practically every day; he now has 20 under his belt. We started teaching him American Sign Language (ASL) because we heard that it helped decrease frustration in very young children. Sure enough- I'll give you an example from this week: We're eating dinner and Jeremy begins to get agitated and throws his banana on the floor.
"Tell me what you want, Sweetheart" I encourage him. "Use your hands" and I touch his hand.
He signs "water". I give him water. He's happy. Simple as that. I would not have guessed he wanted water had he not been able to tell me- major frustration avoided on both parts. The other day, I was deciding whether to feed him dinner (it was time for it) or just take him up to nurse and go to bed - he did look a little tired. So I asked him, while signing "eat" and "milk". He very clearly signed "milk" and reached for the stairs. Fantastic! Thank you ASL and Signing Smart! (BTW, the photo above is from our birthday card to Mommy Fran earlier this spring).
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