Signing

When Ben was little we used sign language to try to give him a way to communicate with us before he had all his vocabulary figured out. A popular sign was "more" closely followed by "please".

Recently we started using signs with Kyle so that he can start learning them. Ben is very interested and very helpful. A few nights ago, he made a sign with his fingers together at the fingertips and his forearms pressed together in front of him and told us, "This is a tree!"

It looked like a tree, but I wasn't sure, so I asked him where he learned that. Turns out he had just made it up, so we helped him look up the real sign for tree and showed it to him. He also learned spider and at times just loves to show us his signs.

He's also started using the sign for toilet in earnest. We could never get him to use it before, but now, he's really funny at the dinner table. He'll be sitting there not saying a word and just signing toilet, waiting for us to notice. When we notice and ask if he needs to go to the bathroom, he nods emphatically and silently heads to the bathroom. It's really cute.