Baby Sign Language

We’ve been signing to Ella since she was about 5 months old. Dave bought me a baby signing book as a prize one day because he knew I was interested, and we started almost immediately. We use the following signs with her regularly.

Milk
Change diaper
Eat/Food
Cup
Cat
Dog
Fan
Up
Bath
All done
Soft touch

She understands all of them (maybe not “dog” so much because it’s a pat on the leg and she seems to miss that since it doesn’t happen in front of your face). The book says they usually start to sign back at around 7 months. She has been inconsistently signing her variation of “milk” for about a month now, but it’s suddenly become very consistent and clear. She signs while she’s nursing or drinking milk from her cup. When I dropped her off this morning, I was talking to Grandma about milk and she was signing it when I said the word. When I called to check on her a bit ago, Grandma told me that she was telling her she wanted to nurse this morning by patting her (Grandma’s) breast with one hand and signing “milk” with the other! Grandma told her that “Mommy does that,” and offered her milk in a cup. She didn’t want the cup. She continued to pat and sign. She was sleepy and wanted to nurse, so I think they opted for a cuddle instead.

Can I tell you how excited I am about this?! She is six and a half months old, and she just clearly communicated a want without crying or fussing – and she didn’t just say she wanted milk, she specified that she wanted to nurse rather than have it from a cup. Amazing. I had been wondering how that would work because the book says to use the same sign for milk regardless of whether it’s from nursing or a cup. Obviously, she figured out how to distinguish between the two. I’m inspired to start incorporating more signs into our vocabulary. I was sort of waiting until we had a breakthrough because I didn’t want to overwhelm her (or myself). I think we’ve had one.