Getting His Point Across

Note: This post is a little long, but it's for my sake as much as for our loyal readers :) I want to make sure I remember all these fun details about George.

Our otherwise very loud boy has still not picked up any new words. He uses mama and dada dozens of times a day, usually calling for whoever is not there to join in on the fun. If I get him from his crib in the morning, his first word of the day is Dada. If Sean gets him, he says Mama. Whenever I pick up the phone, George tilts his head to the side and says, "Dada?" And once Sean is home, everything from that point on must involve all three of us. If Sean does something fun with G once, he'll call for me to come watch before he'll do it again and vice versa. It's pretty darn cute.

While he keeps his verbalized words locked up, his signing has really taken off. It's pretty amazing how much he communicates with his signs everyday. He can now sign more, please, hurt, where, cat, dog, fish, bird, shoes, hat, eat/food, drink/water, hot, ball, flower, and phone. It's pretty amazing how much he can tell me during a day that these several signs cover. He can combine two signs together (like "where" and "fish" when he wants some goldfish for a snack) and can talk about the past using the signs as well (remembering something he saw somewhere before and wonders where it is now). He has also made up a couple of his own signs for airplane, bus, stir (he loves to stir dry food in a bowl while I make dinner), twinkle twinkle little star, Elmo (he dances around like Elmo does on TV), and grandpa (my personal favorite). One day while looking at pictures of family, George looked at a picture of my dad and made a fist and rolled it over his top lip back and forth to say grandpa (my dad has a thick, dark mustache). He will now make that sign anytime Grandpa is mentioned and I think it's the cutest thing ever.

Hopefully when we go to the doctor in a couple weeks for his 18 month check-up, she won't be too worried about his lack of speech. Last time, we were told he should have 6 words by 18 months, and he only has two (I was so excited the day I posted G saying "ball" outloud. He hasn't said it since that day). But if you count all his signs, he's okay, I just don't know if they'll be worried or not. I'm not. I think he's brilliant :)

Here is a video I tried to make to show some of G's signing skills.

George and Sean were very good to me on my birthday on Monday. George made me a beautiful card (with help from my mom) and Sean got me an iPhone - yippee! It was a very laid-back birthday, but very nice. I got some great gift cards to buy myself some new work clothes for when I sub and when I go back to work in the fall. When I sub, I look in my closet and honestly have no idea what I used to wear to work!