It's Official, Owen's Favorite Sign for Sure....

We treated ourselves to McDonald's for dinner last night, (okay, it was more like I didn't plan anything for dinner and was getting home from my class at 6pm, but the kids saw it as a treat) and Owen immediately spots the Shrek cut out board and tells me in sign "Gorilla" while doing his best gorilla noise. It takes me a second to identify what he is talking about and when I put it together I tell him I can see how he might think Shrek looks kinda like a gorilla. Next, he goes on to point out the dog in the picture. Nope, there's no dog. I don't know the donkey character's name, but that's who he was referring to. Now I know another good signing opportunity. Last night would not have been a good opportunity because I had money in one hand, Owen in the other and two other kids to keep from bickering while waiting to place our order. Amberly, however, took the queue and started telling Owen that a donkey says "HEEE-HAAAW" with an exaggeration that made me proud (for those of you that take my classes, you know I love to draw out the animal sounds and make it sound as authentic as possible). Owen paid her no mind really because he was still intrigued by the green gorilla, I mean, Shrek.

This morning I was searching through the on demand kids movies on Starz and when the picture came up for Monsters Inc. Owen signed "gorilla" again! He has identified a certain look of a character that is not an animal to most closely resemble a gorilla. I get it! This signing thing really shows me how each of my childrens' minds work, it is as if I get to see the wheels spinning in their mind. Baby Sign Language, I LOVE IT! So, I'm busy showing him MONSTER and he looks at me with that questioning look and signs gorilla again. It will take a few demonstrations and good signing opportunities to present themself, but he'll get it. The reason why to demonstrate as many signs as you know to your baby at this age? So they don't beat you to the punch and categorize an object themselves and you have to re-work their thinking. This often happens with babies making up their own signs and then it is harder for us to figure out what the sign means. I'm just glad Owen likes gorillas so much and saw the resemblence and I could put it altogether to know what he was talking about. Pretty soon though he'll be signing for things out of context as he becomes more conversational and the object is not actually present. He's got at least a hundred signs, but for the conversational milestone that is just around the corner I need to keep up on his quick learning curve!

Here monkey monkey monkey!

Recently we went to the San Diego Zoo with our Sign4Baby Playgroup, it was so fun to see the Koalas and Kangaroos. Upon arrival Owen spotted a huge picture of a Gorilla and was telling me all about it (plus giving me the gorilla sound which sounds curiously glose to his rendition of an owl). Through our tour I thought it interesting that Owen was not nearly as excited by the other living moving animals as he was the picture of the Gorilla that he could not stop showing me. Then it occurred to me that he knew how to express himself and engage in conversation for Gorilla and thus could show me how much he enjoyed it, he just did not yet have exposure to these other animals or their signs for that matter to be able to have a like of them yet. All of my kids have loved the Eric Carle book "From Head to Toe" and we go on and on about the gorilla on the cover who thumps his chest (that is the actual sign for Gorilla ; ) and they LOVE IT! When we were exiting Owen did not skip a beat in pointing out this picture above. Yes, it is not HUGE, it is a different picture than the one he spotted earlier and I had more time to grab the camera. At times I wish a videographer could follow us around and capture these fun moments when he was going crazy for GORILLAS! For our next zoo meetup check our playgroup calendar. I am sure it will fill up so rsvp early. www.meetup.com/sign4baby-playgroup

For some fun practice signing animals try reading and signing along with me: