Our precious Bethany

Bethany is the most verbal of all our babies. She imitates us constantly and, at nine months, has developed names for "dada" ("AH-DA!"), "sister" ("AH-TAH!"), "mama" ("MA!"), and loves to wave and say "hi." She blows through her lips when I blow a kiss and tries to do every goofy thing imaginable to get a smile out of us. Tonight when I came home from class, she smiled a big smile and immediately took my glasses off for me so she could share them right back. She charms us right and left!

We are not intensely committed to using sign language with our children but we have always incorporated some of it to aide communication in the early pre-verbal days. Bethany is no exception. We have found that our babies can use it from fairly early on and that it gives them a means of communicating their needs to us and lessening some of that pre-verbal stress when they know what they want but don't know yet how to say it.

The sign we introduce once we start feeding solid foods is "more." It looks like this:

putting our fingers together on each hand and tapping the tips. When I am feeding Bethany her fine fare of finely-ground oatmeal mixed with sweet potatoes or peas, I often use the sign for "more" when asking her if she wants more food. She picked up on it right away and has been using it with me ever since.

I was thoroughly awestruck when I heard what she did tonight with Alex, however! While I was at class, Bethany got hungry while sitting on the floor playing with toys. She looked at her daddy, made the sign for "more," brought her fingers to her mouth, and did that a couple times until he verbally explained what she was telling him so that she knew that he knew.

WOW! I can't get over the miracle she is. :)