A sign of the times.

When Bebe was little, Baby Einstein was the "in" thing. She was around 2 when we bought her Baby Wordsworth, and I remember being amazed as she picked up some signs from it. So I knew when I got pregnant with Dois that I wanted to use sign language with him from an earlier age. Not knowing much sign language myself, I did some research and finally decided on the Baby Signing Time series.

When he was 6 months old we started putting on the first video "every now and then", and probably around 9 months he started watching it once per day (I tended to put it on while getting ready for work). At 17 months, we've "graduated" to more than just the first DVD (we have been watching 1 & 2 for months, so I recently purchased 3 & 4), but this past weekend I suddenly became aware of how frequently Dois is using the signs he's learning.

Just a few examples:

• When I told him it was time to put his socks on, he signed "socks."
• When he saw the bag of groceries my husband just brought home, he signed "banana."
• When he comes into the kitchen whining because he's hungry, he signs "cracker" or "milk" depending on what he wants.
• After hitting his big sister, I told him to be nice, to which he signed "nice" in reply.
• We saw a dog at a community safety fair on Saturday, and he immediately started signing "dog."
• We went on a carousel ride yesterday, and he was signing "horse" the entire time we were in line for the carousel.
• On Friday he heard a bird on the way into daycare, and signed "bird."

It's really, really cool!

I'm hoping that providing him with a new means of communicating besides words, that it will help him to express to us what he needs/wants... and avoid a few (notice I didn't say all!) meltdowns here and there.

Just for fun, a list of the signs he uses consistently:
More
All Done
Water
Eat
Drink
Cracker
Cereal
Milk
Banana
Bird
Cat
Dog
Frog
Horse
Fish
Socks
Hat
Ball
Wash hands
Nice