Baby sign is a must-teach for all parents

Our baby loves to sign to us. He can't stop doing it and I'm thinking when he starts to talk, there will be no stopping him either :) When I stroll him to daycare, he will sign things that he sees. He points at the bus first and then he signs train. Yeah, I can see how the different kinds of vehicles can be hard to distinguish for babies. We'll walk a bit further and then he sees a small boy coming towards us and he'll sign baby. Instead of cradling and rocking, he puts his hands together and rocks. You can see this in the first photo here to the left. He sees the baby in the book so he signs baby :) He loves to sign baby! We arrive at daycare and babies are everywhere so he signs baby all the time.

At home, when he hears water noises outside or on the stereo, he signs rain. We're in Vancouver so most of the time it is rain but some times it's a plane or thunder noises on the stereo. When we read a book with drawings of wolves in it, he will sign dog. There are definitely some confusions but most of the time he is correct when he signs. We just love that he is signing and learning so much! He understands way more than he can sign. Right now, his only way of communicating with us is through sign language. We're still waiting for his first word!

These signs he had already been doing from the last post on baby signing:

• more (also used for "I want it")
  
• milk
• ball
• clean
• bed (sleep is harder so he signs bed when he is tired)

Here are some of the new ones since then:

• baby
• train
• dog
• fish
• bird
• rain
• hat
  
• down, downstairs
  
• eat, food
• book
• cooking
• bath
  

He is learning these and have used them a couple of times:

• danger
• hurt
• banana
• hug
• music
• outside
  
• light
• cold
  
• toothbrush

He can also identify these body parts on his body when we ask where they are:

• nose
• mouth
• ear
• feet
• hand
• head
• (sometimes eye)

The following is a list of ones we're teaching him but he hasn't sign any back yet. Some of them we have been doing since we started, when he was just 6 months old.

• Mommy, Daddy
• Grandma, Grandpa
• friend
  
• diaper
• dirty
• water
• drinking
• home
• hear
• see
• all done
• hot
  
• car
• monkey
• bear
• tiger
• horse
  
• cat
• tree
• wait
• quiet
• come here
• up
  
• sun
• snow
• work
• toy
• hooray
• playing
• red, blue, yellow, green, orange, white
  
• apple
• girl, boy
• kiss
• walking
• spider
• dancing
• bread
• sit
• thank you
• potty

Finally, to end this post, I would like to share a small video of Tristan signing taken a week ago. I would have preferred to place this video above but moving it seems a little hard right now in blogger so I'll just leave it at the bottom. In this video clip, Jean-Louis asks him what is outside, he looks, sees the bird, then signs it. Jean-Louis only speaks French to Tristan so if you don't understand, you will have to take my word for it :) Tristan is bilingual though and can sign bird in English too. Just thought I'd add that :)