We decided early on that Pomme would learn sign language. We took a class, which ended up being more useful for me than for her. Then we tried the “My Baby Can Talk” DVD’s, and those did the trick. By 13 months, she was starting to make a few signs, and by 14 months she was chattering away with her hands. She ended up being a “late” talker, so that was one great reason right there to have her signing vocabulary. At 18 months, even though she could only say a few words, she could communicate very effectively with close to one hundred signs.

Around 22 months, she hit her verbal language “explosion” and has been adding spoken words at a furious pace ever since. We’re now a few days shy of her 2nd birthday, and I think she has close to 200 spoken words (I stopped counting after 80) and speaks in 3-word sentences frequently. For the most part, as she adds the verbal word, she stops using the equivalent sign if she had previously used it.

Generally, her speech is very clear. But like all toddlers, sometimes certain sounds are difficult to produce and a few different words will end up sounding very similar, or just very strange, so that it’s difficult to understand their meaning. Here is where signing again becomes very useful.

This morning, she was playing on my bedroom floor with Flipper, they were falling down and blowing each other over, being very silly. She looked up at me and said “mummy waf!”

Um… Waf?

Okay, what did this mean? “Mummy woof”, she wanted me to play like a dog? “Mummy love”, she loves her mommy? “Mummy laugh”, mummy thinks this is funny? Oh, that must be it!

“Mummy laugh?” I repeated back to her, and laughed. She looked at me like I was crazy, and stood up. Rubbing her hands on her chest, she said more emphatically, “mummy VAF!!”

Ohhhh… Mummy BATH. Of course! I was sitting there in my bathrobe and a towel on my head, having just come from the shower. She made the sign for “bath” to clarify when I couldn’t understand her verbal efforts.

“Mummy BATH!” I said, and she grinned. We had achieved communication, and she couldn’t be prouder… of me. “Yes, mummy BAF” she said, and went back to her playing.

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