we have communication

[kuddliphish]

The babe has been waving bye-bye and hello for a few weeks now. She's been clapping her hands (generally in response to other people clapping their hands) for a few months. I had heard that hand clapping can be a modified "more" sign. (here is an online dictionary that I like if you don't know sign) Babies simplify signs just like they do spoken

Comments

[kuddliphish]

I'm pretty excited about it ;) There are some schools of baby sign that tell you to just teach made-up signs that make sense in your life, but the books I read about it pointed out that ASL is an language (there are all kinds of advantages to learning two languages young, as I'm sure you know) and that teaching your baby so that she can communicate with people outside of your immediate family is a good idea. That said we modify some of the signs to make them one handed ("milk" for example is usually a two handed sign, but I generally don't have two hands free at the applicable moment) and babies do tend to simplified signs at first (sometimes they'll just make the motion without the hand shape, and some of the hand shapes are a little complicated)

So, uh, yeah, to answer your question, we are doing ASL primarily.

[pmb]

You remind me of the babe.
What babe?
The babe with the power.
What power?
The power of signing!
Signing?!
SIGNING!!!

[bettsbaby]

AWESOME!

[trenchwench]

I think you should go ahead and futz with ASL as it works the best for you. Back when I was working in the mental institution, we had a campus wide form of modified ASL with variations for specific clients that fit their needs (i.e. some only had limited fine motorskills, one hand, etc.)

ASL is one of those languages I've dabbled in for years, but it would've been so much easier to have learned when I was young. Glad to hear that you two are talking :)

[zellandyne]

that's totally awesome