14 Months Old Today!

So, my little baby pants is 14 months old today! Awww...my wittle gull is gwowing up. (no, not an actual gull - but that was my baby voice spelling of 'girl')

She has I think about 8 teeth now...can't wait for those molars to come in. NOT! But actually her teething process hasn't been that bad (thank you Lord).

The biggest thing that has happened in the past couple of months is that we have been teaching her sign language, and she is using it! It's really awesome to watch. Back when she was about 8 months, I found a video of a baby signing on YouTube, and I thought it was an awesome concept to teach a hearing child sign language so that they can communicate with you much earlier than they could speak. So, I learned a couple of signs from the video and started doing them at the dinner table for about a month straight...and nothing. We did the signs for "More" and "All Done". She didn't seem interested, she didn't sign back. Then, at about 12 months...we were eating dinner and I asked her if she wanted more, but I did not do the sign because honestly I was at the giving up point. But then Baby Pants did the sign for "More"!!! I was SO EXCITED! (in all caps!!) So, then I ordered a pack of Signing Time DVDs, Flashcards, Books and CDs to teach her more signs, and she totally loves it! The DVD is her favorite thing, and she made up her own sign for when she wants to watch it...she just starts waving her hands in the air and singing (she thinks she's singing the theme song...it's hilarious).

So far her vocabulary includes:

-Eat
-More
-All Done
-Bath
-Cat
-Dog
-Bird
-Fish
-Milk
-Dad
-Mom
-Diaper Change
-Ball
-Car
-Airplane

And I think that's it...now mind you some of these are "near" signs...which means a sign that's close to the real one, but you can tell what they mean. For example, the sign for "Dad" is taking your hand, extending all your fingers (like you are showing the number 'Five'), and touching your thumb to your forehead a couple times. Baby Pant's version is to just take her index finger and point to her head.

Anyway..I am totally thrilled by this development. Baby Pants is the first one of my children that I have signed with, and I think it's totally cool because she can "tell" me what she wants before she has developed the verbal skills to speak the word. We of course still say all of the words along with the sign so as not to delay her speech development, but all I can say is that it's totally cool.

Anywho...didn't mean to turn that into a baby signing advocacy email...this was about my baby turning 14 months...but like I said, this has been the biggest milestone for the last month. :)