Signing up a Storm

Over the past month Noah has become a signing machine. He's reached that point I remember with Sam where new signs come quickly and easily. Unfortunately, he's also at that point where his coordination is not the best, so many signs look the same. That means that when he walks up to me when I'm in the kitchen cooking and frantically waves his left arm, I assume he wants to go outside and politely tell him it is too hot right now. Only after he dissolves into tears do I realize that he means water, and so his thirst is finally quenched.

What has most surprised me about Noah's signing is that he's grouping multiple things under one sign. Sam pretty much signed for what we told him a sign stood for. Sure we used the sign for car for bus and tractor too, but Sam never initiated that kind of grouping.

Noah has.

And he does it most with animals.

Sam was always a vehicle boy. When he was 9 months old, we drove to Champaign to see friends and Sam wouldn't go to sleep if a semi happened to pass his window. That was a fun trip. Noah, on the other hand, is an animal boy. Sure cars and trucks (especially garbage trucks) are fun, but nothing is better than a duck. And since we haven't given him many animal signs (mainly because we didn't have to learn many with Sam), he's started combining animals. All birds get the duck sign, most four-legged animals get the dog sign, etc.

The funniest is when he actually sees a duck or a dog because then he starts saying "da! da!! da!!!" with the vowel going up higher each time. The other night we were watching Bolt and Noah woke up. Joy went to get him and brought him down to see if he'd sleep in her arms so we could finish the movie (Noah gets away with more than Sam ever did). Of course, Noah saw a dog on the screen and sleeping was a lost cause. He frantically signed dog and shouted "da!! da!!!" and refused to look anywhere but the TV. So much for sleep that night.