Talking Heads

Sophie's first sign at 6 months was for "milk", a sign she still uses on a daily basis! She regularly uses all the regular baby signs for miscellaneous animals and daily life ("more" + eat/drink/play, up, down, all gone/ finished) but this weekend we started on some more abstract signs like "love" and "share".

Mum is here right now with Sophie and coinciding with Sophie's language acquisition spurt. So far, Sophie's sign language vocabulary far outstrips her (intelligble!) spoken words, so now that my Mum is here, she has started making sure that the princess speaks as well as she signs. My mother "reliably" informs me that I spoke in short but complete sentences when I was about 13 months old. So at least she has 50% genetic potential for early speech!!

So here we are in the middle of the first week that Mum has been here and the latest favourite activity is "reading" - she holds a book in front of her and "reads" the story herself. Interestingly enough, she actually follows the correct page order, holds the book the right way up, and "repeats" the story the way I usually tell it. I know this for a fact because when she reaches the parts of the story requiring animal noise input, she actually makes the "moo" and "meow" and "ah--choo" at the correct pages in the book!!

I've been reading aloud to Sophie since birth. Just whatever I was reading myself at that time, usually an article from the Economist or the Commercial Law review. BUT as she began to make her tastes known, she'd ask to change this boring crap to more interesting fare. Like Sandra Boyton "But not the hippopatamus" and ALL the Dr Seuss's Flip the Flap books, and "Mr Brown can Moo".

Confession - I prefer it too!!