Some of you may know that we’re trying to teach Evan a little bit of sign language. The idea is that he can communicate with us prior to his learning how to actually speak those words. We were starting with the basic ones to help communicate his needs, such as “all done”, “more”, “drink”, etc. Many of those are fairly abstract concepts and he really hasn’t caught on yet.
Evan has always been obsessed with ceiling fans, so we’d point out the ceiling fan, tell him what is was and make the sign (which is moving your arm in a circle in the air pointing with your index finger). A few days ago we had a breakthrough. He just started waving his arm in the air while looking at the fan and giggling. At first he wasn’t doing the sign quite right (not using his index finger) and would sometimes do the sign at the TV or the light over the kitchen table (or even just to get a laugh from us).
Now he’s pretty much got it figured out. He makes the sign properly and when we ask him “Where’s the ceiling fan?” he’ll make the sign and walk back to our bedroom where the fan is located. We’re getting fewer “false positives” as well, since we’re showing him signs for “light” and “tv”. As a side effect, he’s also starting to point at whatever he wants. It’s a lot of fun to see how proud of himself he is when he catches on! Now trips to home improvement stores have gotten way more exciting! He’s got a couple of other signs that he’s starting to learn as well.
On the speaking front, he’s been saying “Mama”, “Dada”, “Kitty”, “I got it”, “Hi” and “Icky” for a while. “Kitty” refers to any animal, baby or radio controlled car. “Icky” he’ll say when we tell him to get away from the garbage can or something similar. “I got it” he says when he grabs something. “Hi” is good for taking strangers at Walmart by surprise. He also converses with our little cat Ginger in her native tongue, but he won’t tell us what they’re saying.
He’s also mastered walking now, can climb the steps (attended of course) and is just about to run. We’d better hit the gym, I guess, to keep up!
That sounds so very cute. 🙂