Communication

Mr. G is coming right along with his talking.  And, man, is his little voice so sweet!

He nows says: mama, dada, and bye-bye very clearly and he knows exactly what he is saying and when to say it.  His bye-bye is always accompanied by a fully-extended-in-the-air straight arm wave.  If he is really excited, he fully raises and extends both arms.  

He is happy to say "mama" of his own accord - when he is good and ready - but not on demand, thankyouverymuch.  The little rascal likes to poke fun at my expense:  If you ask him to say "mama", he will say "dada" and then laugh this hilarious little throaty laugh.    How does one so young know that he is teasing, and that it is so funny?!?

And he is almost constantly vocalizing while he is awake.  And it isn't "goo goo...ga ga", it really does sound like talking...albeit in a different language.  We laugh and conjecture that he probably thinks he makes just as much sense as we do.  

Gabriel is also coming along nicely with his sign language.  It helped things along when I started being more consistent about showing him the signs.  I'm quick like that.

But, instead of using his fingers and fingertips like many of the signs call for...Mr. G likes to use his whole fist.

Here is "eat":

Here is "more":

Gabriel does "eat" and "more" of his own accord, meaning even when we don't prompt him physically or verbally.

He can also do "done"(or finished) and "sleep" of his own accord, but I don't have pictures of those.

One night last week Gabriel used "sleep" of his own accord for the very first time.  Jas had him laying down while he changed his diaper.  It was right at 7 p.m., when we normally would be laying him down, and G signed "sleep" all on his own!  He's Brilliant, I tell you!  The very sad thing was, while we normally would have been laying him down right then, we instead had to pack him into his carseat to drive to the funeral home for a visitation time.  The poor thing probably was thinking, "But they TOLD me that was the sign for "sleep".  I'm so confused!!!"

O.k. these are not signs, but Jas is very proud that he has also taught Gabriel how to do "knuckles" (a.k.a. "fist bump"):

Another favorite hand-activity of Mr. G's is "high-fives."  But he doesn't like to stop at just five.  He will (like my other children before him) keeping right on slapping ad infinitum...so I just keep counting by fives until we get to 100...and then we throw up our arms and whoop and holler "Yay!"  (easy trick for teaching kids to skip-count by 5 also!)

When Elisabeth and Noah were little and still in a high chair eating baby food, I worked with them to train them not to run their hands through their hair while they were eating (because their hands almost always had food on them!).

Well, Mr. G is not wanting to get with that training plan.  We really do have a little root-tooter on our hands here.

Gabriel has now made up his own sign for "I'm ready to get down NOW!"...and his sign is that he holds his hand up to touch the hair on the side of his head.

 He will look right at me, and oh-so-slowly raise his right hand (always the right) up to touch his hair...exactly like I've worked with him time and time again to NOT do.

Yes, he is 99% of the time a very happy, extremely content little boy...

...but when your mama ignores your very plain request to "Get down!", you can't be expected to be happy about it!