Words and Signs

I have been wanting to document Nathanh's words for awhile now, but I have been so busy catching up with older posts...
Nathanh's vocabulary is definitely growing.  We are always amazed by how much he understands and slowly but surely his own expressive communication is coming along as well.

Words he can say:
*Mama
*Dada
*doggy
*kitty
*bubble
*Nana
*yeah (I would prefer him to say yes, but I have to admit he probably gets this from me)

Words he can approximate:
mo = more
ee = bee
ack = snack

Animal sounds:
"meow" - this is really cute to hear.  He uses this little soft voice and it is just so sweet...if I were a cat I'd want to be Nathanh's friend...unfortunately other cats don't think that way and tend to run away from him.
"quack" - now as cute and sweet as his "meow" is, his "quack" is hideous!  It sounds more like a dying duck, no make that a loud dying duck!  But it is his "quack" so I love it...but it "quacks" me up every time!! (sorry, I couldn't resist!)

I have also been teaching Nathanh baby sign language.  I wasn't really sure I wanted to do this at first but I thought if I could ease communication, especially around mealtimes with "more" and "finished" then why not give it a try.  Just so you know, I have read up on some of the research around baby sign and I don't think it makes kids smarter or even has long term benefits.  It is solely to ease communication (and thus frustration) at an earlier age.  But as it turns out, I am loving it.  I find it very interesting to know what Nathnah is hearing or thinking about.  For example, in the car if I have a children's CD on and there is a song about fish, Nathanh will sign "fish".  I like knowing that he is listening to the music and picking up individual words, thus beginning to understand what it is about.  I know he knows what a train sounds like because when he hears a train whistle (you can often hear them from the park behind our house) he will sign "train".  Anyways, I am always fascinated to know what he is seeing, hearing or thinking and love that he has a way to communicate these things to me.  He is just getting to a stage / age that he is able to learn signs fairly quickly so teaching him is fun too.

Here are the signs that Nathanh knows:
*airplane
*train
*bus (he actually does the wheels from "Wheels on the Bus" for bus which is not the correct ASL sign but it is consistent and we understand him so it counts as communication)
*wheels (he does this for bus but he also understands that cars and trucks have wheels too and will point them out to us)
*car (he does the horn or beep beep for car)
*truck
*more
*finished (will use this at the end of a meal, when his bath time is over, or when he wants off a swing)
*water
*milk
*strawberry
*apple
*dog
*fish
*butterfly
*hi
*bye
*star (he knows a picture of a star and that the little dot in the sky is a star - I would not know this if he couldn't sign it to me and that is why I like sign so much)

Nathanh can also point to quite a few body parts and that is often how you sign it too.

Nathanh signing airplane.

butterfly - he can't quite get his thumbs crossed but he does move his fingers like wings.

Interestingly enough, when the IDP consultant visited us last week to do a 14 month screening, she said that sign counted as expressive communication so even though he may not be able to vocalize all of those words he ended up getting the highest possible score under communication.