Chatterbox

In the last few weeks Drew has become a real signing chatterbox.

His current vocabulary includes: peas, cookie, cracker, cheese, duck, drum, music, truck, car, dog, cat, play, cup, lid, I love you, wash hands, mommy, daddy, where, ball, leaf, lights on, bike, potty, diaper, more, again, all done, goodbye, I don't know, bird, sleep, book, read, suction, milk, fish, socks, shoes, dance, jump, listen, brush teeth, cheerios, apple, pear, and peach.


About half of these sign he spontaneously initiates when he's trying to tell us something, others he does in response to us showing him the sign and with a lot of coaxing. Many of them are rudimentary versions of the correct sign. Similarly to when a speaking baby says "ba" and you have to guess whether they are referring to "ball", or "bath", or "baby", when drew randomly bangs his hands together he may be saying "cup" or "book" or "more" or "cheese" and we use context and guessing to figure out what he is trying to say. This morning he stood at the window opening and closing his hand excitedly and I thought he was asking for milk until I noticed a little brown bird in the tree.

It is fascinating to watch Drew's signs develop. For example, he used to sign "I love you" with a single fist raised in the air (in a sort of power stance/salute), he now puts his index finger up on his raised hand. He just needs to get the pinky finger up as well and he will be perfectly "pronouncing" "I love you". For some of the signs he gets the hand shape and movement correct but insists on doing the sign on mommy or daddy as opposed to himself. "Dog" is often said with an open hand slapping mommy or daddy's leg rather than his own; "Sleep" is his open hand over daddy's face instead of his own.

Three of the signs we see a lot of these days are "where?", "music" and "truck".

Everything is a game of peek-a-boo for Drew, he signs "where?" whenever he drops something (often on purpose, specifically so he can ask us "where?"), or hides something, or if one of us leaves the room, or a truck or a dog go by the front window. The whole world is his game of hide-and-seek.

He is also a real music-lover. The first sign he does upon waking is a request for "music". He has zero patience for the two second gap between songs on an album, so every song transition is met with fussing and frantic demands for "music".

Trucks may be Drew's biggest love. He signs "truck" whenever a truck drives by the window, since we are on the delivery route to the hospital and all the condos on our alley have independent garbage pick-up this is about 30 times an hour during the week. He also signs "truck" when he plays with his trucks, reads his books about trucks, or hears a truck engine. Even if he is seemingly asleep in my arms, the sound of a diesel engine is often enough to get him to spring right up and excitedly tell me about the "truck" he heard.

I've tried really hard to capture this 'chattering' on video but it's become challenging since Drew now stops what he's doing and heads straight over when he sees the camera. I managed to catch a quick clip while he was reading with Daddy: