Good day to you. Or good evening. Whichever it may be for you, I hope you are enjoying your time. And I want to thank you for coming by to share in our stories. It is very much appreciated.
It has become abundantly clear in recent days how much Del is able to understand when we talk and sign to her. There are simple "commands" that we have practiced with her that she deciphers without any problem, such as knowing the difference between "give a hug," "give a kiss," and "give high five!" (although the last one is usually said with such exuberance and gusto that it likely isn't just the words that Del attends to but also the energy of the request). She is very tuned in to us when we are communicating with her, and is making constant attempts to let us know her needs with her voice and hands (even though most of the time we're still pretty clueless about what she's trying to say).
I have to preface this next little story with a piece of information. Del loves books. Love love loves them. She sits for entire (short) stories two or three times in a row, turning pages and clapping when she sees familiar drawings or characters she likes. Her absolute favorite book is Dinosaur Roar by Henrietta Stickland. I read the book to her with silly voices that match the dinosaurs in the book, roaring and squeaking in turn with the opening line, "Dinosaur ROOAAARRRR, dinosaur squeak." Lately, whenever I read it to her, she says "eek" along with me when I do the squeaky dinosaur voice.
So now the story: Two days ago I was doing the dishes and Del was playing at the base of her bookshelf, surrounded (as usual) by the mountain of books she had pulled down from the shelves. I was looking away from her when she made what could only be described as a "ROOAAARRRR" sound. I turned around and sure enough, she was holding Dinosaur Roar in her hand. I recited the first line for her and she squealed when I said "squeak!" and dropped the book on a pile of others to crawl over to me. I gave her a high five, and then told her to go get "ROAR!" I repeated the request again then pointed at her pile of books. She crawled over there and sat down, looking up at me. I asked her, "where is ROAR?" and she smiled, grabbed the book, and held it out for me so I could read it to her. (again).
Del's verbal play is filled with a lot of phonemic variety, volume control exercises, and pitch exploration. No first words just yet, and she is not yet consistently using canonical syllables, or syllables that both start and end with a consonant (marked as CVC, these are starting to pop up more frequently in her babbling). Her new favorite non-linguistic sound is to pucker her lips in a tight little "o" and blow air or hoot. This was very adorable and endearing until Del decided that it would be fun to try this trick with applesauce in her mouth. Oh, the joys of parenthood are never ending! So all in all, Del has keen interest in her voice and all that it can do for her, and is slowly and steadily progressing through the steps of early sound development.
ASL is where Del has made (relatively) large leaps lately. She has started to produce signs in locations other than neutral signing space such as on her face and chest. She uses so many different handshapes, various kinds of finger play (proto-fingerspelling?), and sign movements when she hand-babbles these days that we can't keep up with everything new she produces; it's a barrage of manual linguistic play every time she lifts her arms to share a thought with us. See the video below for a brief example of what this looks like (my apologies for the poor quality; I have to capture these moments incognito).
The fluid nature of both spoken and signed languages make it difficult at times to pick out discrete units such as individual phonemes or signs. Here Del transitions rapidly through several different signs, experimenting with the dexterity and linguistic creativity she is tapping into more and more each day.
Thanks for stopping by, and please share your thoughts, questions, comments. . .I know there are some of you reading out there who know so much about these topics and I am eager for your perspective and input. I'm also curious to know what piques your interests, and the kinds of things you wonder when you watch or listen as people communicate with one-another. Share, share, share! (pretty please)
It has become abundantly clear in recent days how much Del is able to understand when we talk and sign to her. There are simple "commands" that we have practiced with her that she deciphers without any problem, such as knowing the difference between "give a hug," "give a kiss," and "give high five!" (although the last one is usually said with such exuberance and gusto that it likely isn't just the words that Del attends to but also the energy of the request). She is very tuned in to us when we are communicating with her, and is making constant attempts to let us know her needs with her voice and hands (even though most of the time we're still pretty clueless about what she's trying to say).
I have to preface this next little story with a piece of information. Del loves books. Love love loves them. She sits for entire (short) stories two or three times in a row, turning pages and clapping when she sees familiar drawings or characters she likes. Her absolute favorite book is Dinosaur Roar by Henrietta Stickland. I read the book to her with silly voices that match the dinosaurs in the book, roaring and squeaking in turn with the opening line, "Dinosaur ROOAAARRRR, dinosaur squeak." Lately, whenever I read it to her, she says "eek" along with me when I do the squeaky dinosaur voice.
So now the story: Two days ago I was doing the dishes and Del was playing at the base of her bookshelf, surrounded (as usual) by the mountain of books she had pulled down from the shelves. I was looking away from her when she made what could only be described as a "ROOAAARRRR" sound. I turned around and sure enough, she was holding Dinosaur Roar in her hand. I recited the first line for her and she squealed when I said "squeak!" and dropped the book on a pile of others to crawl over to me. I gave her a high five, and then told her to go get "ROAR!" I repeated the request again then pointed at her pile of books. She crawled over there and sat down, looking up at me. I asked her, "where is ROAR?" and she smiled, grabbed the book, and held it out for me so I could read it to her. (again).
Del's verbal play is filled with a lot of phonemic variety, volume control exercises, and pitch exploration. No first words just yet, and she is not yet consistently using canonical syllables, or syllables that both start and end with a consonant (marked as CVC, these are starting to pop up more frequently in her babbling). Her new favorite non-linguistic sound is to pucker her lips in a tight little "o" and blow air or hoot. This was very adorable and endearing until Del decided that it would be fun to try this trick with applesauce in her mouth. Oh, the joys of parenthood are never ending! So all in all, Del has keen interest in her voice and all that it can do for her, and is slowly and steadily progressing through the steps of early sound development.
ASL is where Del has made (relatively) large leaps lately. She has started to produce signs in locations other than neutral signing space such as on her face and chest. She uses so many different handshapes, various kinds of finger play (proto-fingerspelling?), and sign movements when she hand-babbles these days that we can't keep up with everything new she produces; it's a barrage of manual linguistic play every time she lifts her arms to share a thought with us. See the video below for a brief example of what this looks like (my apologies for the poor quality; I have to capture these moments incognito).
The fluid nature of both spoken and signed languages make it difficult at times to pick out discrete units such as individual phonemes or signs. Here Del transitions rapidly through several different signs, experimenting with the dexterity and linguistic creativity she is tapping into more and more each day.
Thanks for stopping by, and please share your thoughts, questions, comments. . .I know there are some of you reading out there who know so much about these topics and I am eager for your perspective and input. I'm also curious to know what piques your interests, and the kinds of things you wonder when you watch or listen as people communicate with one-another. Share, share, share! (pretty please)
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