First Pick-Up Line
Aug. 20th, 2008 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_pretentiousGareth toddled across the floor at Starbucks, hands gripping furniture all the way, to check out the five-month-old girl in the car seat. She gazed up at him with dazzling blue eyes.
"Good!" he said. "Good!"
I'm pretty sure that's the first time he's spoken a recognizable word to a fellow child, though he's babbled to his cousins and to the other kids at the library's weekly Mother Goose Hour.
Gareth's recognizable spoken vocabulary so far consists of:
kitty
cat
daddy
mommy
hi
red
up
yummy
good
And in ASL:
music
light
ceiling fan
phone
more
milk (nurse/hug)
food
all done
My favorite baby sign language gurus advise parents to choose 12 signs to start with, half signs about things babies are interested in (Ooh, a ceiling fan! Hey, I want some music!), and half about the things parents want their babies to be able to give them straight answers about (Do you want more food, or are you all done?). Gareth's ASL vocabulary is neatly half and half, just as the gurus predicted if I followed their techniques.
There are a lot of other words he seems to understand, but I never know how much of that is wishful thinking. I think he's figured out this week that Gareth is a word just for him, whereas baby names a category that includes him and others like him. Impossible to be sure.
"Good!" he said. "Good!"
I'm pretty sure that's the first time he's spoken a recognizable word to a fellow child, though he's babbled to his cousins and to the other kids at the library's weekly Mother Goose Hour.
Gareth's recognizable spoken vocabulary so far consists of:
kitty
cat
daddy
mommy
hi
red
up
yummy
good
And in ASL:
music
light
ceiling fan
phone
more
milk (nurse/hug)
food
all done
My favorite baby sign language gurus advise parents to choose 12 signs to start with, half signs about things babies are interested in (Ooh, a ceiling fan! Hey, I want some music!), and half about the things parents want their babies to be able to give them straight answers about (Do you want more food, or are you all done?). Gareth's ASL vocabulary is neatly half and half, just as the gurus predicted if I followed their techniques.
There are a lot of other words he seems to understand, but I never know how much of that is wishful thinking. I think he's figured out this week that Gareth is a word just for him, whereas baby names a category that includes him and others like him. Impossible to be sure.
