High Five!

Del is addicted to high-fiving. She does it all day long, and shrieks with glee each and every time. She is, in fact, shrieking as I type this, playing in the other room with Daddy F. I don't remember how the high-five fanaticism started; I'm thinking it was Daddy F's doing as I tend towards the fist-bump in matters of casual hand-to-hand greetings. She's also doing this funky little belly crawl as she crawl-runs around the apartment, flopping flat onto her stomach from hands and knees with a "thwump" and a giggle. She likes to hug and loves to wrestle, and has serious height advantage when it comes to new-shelf exploration and the getting-into of things not intended for her to get into.

Receptively, Del's language has taken a bit of a jump. The other day Daddy F and Del were playing a game of passing a teether back and forth. He gave it to her and pointed to me and signed, "Give it to Mommy." I didn't call to her or reach out my hands; I just waited to see what she would do. She looked at him with a blank face and Daddy F pointed to me again and signed "Mommy, go give this to mommy. Give. Mommy." Del's eyes all of a sudden lit up as she understood the message and she shrieked as she sped over to me and shoved the toy at me, elated. (Insert typical background noise of "yay!" and clap-clap-clap!) Since then I've been giving Del little directives, to see how much she is able to understand and follow. Startling, really, to think of how brilliant babies are. So much learning, so quickly, and not only is it effortless, but they truly delight in each and every new discovery along the way.

Del's hand babbling has increased recently, and has taken on more "intonation," or different level of intensity. When she wakes in the morning, she tends to wave her hands about with loose wrists, talking at the same time as though sharing with us the stories of her dreams. When we read books to her before naps or at bedtime, she will sometimes turn the pages herself, and babble manually and vocally at the same time, as though telling us the story. She has a lot more intonation in her voice these days, with long, ear-shattering minutes dedicated to the exploration of: HOW HIGH and HOW LOUD can this voice of mine go?

Del seems to already have a fundamental grasp of Daddy F's deafness. Our schedule during the week is such that both Daddy F and I are home alone with Del different days. When I put Del down for a nap and she wakes up, she will typically start yelling or talking loudly to herself when she gets up to alert me to come get her. The other day I came home early and Daddy F had just put Del down for a nap. I took care of some bills and read for a while in our back den. At one point I went to go get a drink of water and passed our bedroom. There Del was, sitting up wide awake and staring straight at the door, just waiting for someone to appear. She was silent as can be, and looked confused, then surprised, then happy to see me as we caught each-others' eyes. Daddy F claims that she is typically sitting up and staring at the doorway like this when he goes in to check if she's awake. I can honestly say that I have never experienced Del waking up silently when I am home alone with her. She's put two and two together and learned that Daddy doesn't come when yelled at, but mommy does. It will be interesting to see how she uses this information to her advantage (and my disadvantage?) as she continues to grow and learn.

A-ya-ya-ya-ya squeeeEEEEE!

If how often she makes loud noises is any indication, Del really loves the way she sounds! She babbles away while she's bouncing at her window sill, surveying the street below. She screeches unbelievably high and loud as she run-crawls through our wooden hallways, bringing to mind the imagined ear-splitting call of flying dinosaurs. She grunts and squeals as she plays with piles of tupperware containers. She is having as much fun discovering her voice and the sounds she can make with it as she is learning about the power of language emerging at her very fingertips.

Del has turned a fun corner in her growth. Aside from being ginormous (97th percentile for height!) and movin' and groovin' right along, she also seems so much more here now. She seems so in tune with who and what is around her, and interacts with her environment, people, animals, and toys with so much interest and excitement. I was watching her face yesterday as I was reading a book to her, and she was really looking at the simple colorful drawings as we came to each new page. She would watch my finger as I read along with the text on the page, then she would look at the drawing and just smile! She has loved books for a long time but now she will sometimes sit for a whole story (we're talking ten page board books of course) and helps turn the pages. The only problem arises when she wants to start chewing on the books and I have to remind her that books are for reading, not eating.  (but mom, they're so delicious!)

She really digs a great game of peek-a-boo and will initiate silly little games on her own by squatting to hide behind the coffee table and then popping up so me and Daddy F can see her (which is typically met with lots of claps and "yay!" and big smiles from us). The best is when she doesn't squat enough to hide from view but gets just as excited when she "surprises" us by popping up. That's another activity during which Del might choose to squeal. . .just for squealing's sake.

Time goes waytoofast when you're watching tiny floppy-headed, chicken-boned babies grow into toothy-grinning, almost-walking, chubby-wristed little people. The fact that Del can use a sign to communicate a need to me (i.e., "milk" to communicate "feed me now!") is amazing to me. Not only is it a big step in her linguistic growth, but it also starts Del and I on a brand new road together where she can now advocate for herself. This means that I no longer have to guess 100% of the time what her needs are. This is when she starts to really discover the World and what she thinks about it.

Language-wise, Del seems more in tune with the signing and talking around her, and has started to be more expressive with both modalities. She added "book" and another two-handed symmetrical sign to her list this past week. Her version of "book" is to clap her hands together then apart with palms facing up. We're still deciphering a few others that are emerging. Del loves to talk to us and will take several conversational turns when hand-babbling and during "fake" conversations with me. She'll make some silly noise or babble and I copy her. This goes back and forth for a bit, depending on how interested Del is. Earlier today we went back and forth seven times before Del got tired of me and starting picking at the threads in a throw rug.

It's interesting for me (and probably unbelievable to those who know me well) that I sometime have to remind myself to talk to Del. Not that I don't interact with her constantly, but because our home language is ASL, I get used to quiet and sign with Del when Daddy F is around. I make sure to do all the suggested language modeling with her and talk to her as I go about my daily business, but it has taken some getting used to because I feel like I'm talking to myself. Now that she is vocalizing more, our conversations don't feel so one-sided, and her pure enjoyment of her voice reminds me to be diligent and encourage her.  

Please enjoy the videos. I apologize to any Deaf or HOH readers about the lack of captions. I haven't figured out YouTube's captioning tool. If anyone is skilled with this and would like to teach me how, I would be very grateful.

This first video is a montage of Del's vocal play and babbling (that I have been able to capture!). In the first two segments, she is squealing and grunting; in the third and fourth she is babbling.

This second video is a set of clips that give some insight into Del's manual language development. We believe the signs captured here are Del's version of the signs "more," "milk," and "change."

Daddy F and I are off to enjoy a Sunday afternoon date together in honor of his (gasp!) 30th birthday. I hope you all find something to celebrate today (and every day!)

Toodle-oo

First signs, first words?

To any parents (or aunties or uncles, siblings or friends), what were your baby's (or babies') first signs and/or words? What things do you remember about their language around ten months of age? Is your baby bi- (or tri-) lingual? If yes, what language did/does that baby prefer? At what age did baby begin to code-switch, or go back and forth with ease between the two languages?

Variegated varietals

Happy Sunday (especially since the Bears are about to clinch this round of the playoffs)

Last Saturday evening I was prepping some veggies for dinner, and Del was happily sitting at my feet and playing with a lime, babbling all the while. I didn't manage to get a recording of her (yet!), but I did glance at the clock and take a five-minute language sample to get a more official measure of the sounds, syllable types, and length of utterances she is making these days. I will do my best to write out what it sounded like, then I will show a broad phonetic transcription of her sounds, followed by a brief analysis of her vocal development to date. This is approximately what I was listening to as I chopped carrots and peeled sweet potatoes:

Aaaaajeejeejivezivaaavai! Aaaavv. Vvvvvvv. Aheyaijai! Yay. Ayayayayaaaaaa! Abibibibibai. Awawawawaaaaa! Vvvvvv. Aaaayayaya! Zzzzzzz. Ahdadadadi. Aivaivadee! Tladadadee. Sfadadee. Gagagudaydeedee!

Phonetic transcriptions:
/a::ʤiʤiʤɪvəzɪvavaɪ/
/a::v/
/v::/
/aheɪjaɪʤaɪ/
/jeɪj/
/ajajajaja::/
/abɪbɪbɪbɪbaɪ/
/awawawawa::/
/v::/
/a::jajaja/
/z::/
/adadadadɪ/
/aɪvaɪvadi/
/dladadadi/
/zvadadi/
/gagagʊdeɪdidi/

Her longest utterance during that five minutes was eight syllables long. Syllable shapes include sustained, or prolonged, vowels (written as V:), sustained continuant consonants (written as C:, this refers to any consonant sound you can sustain such as /m, n, f, v, s, z/), the common and prevalent consonant-vowel syllables (written as CV), and the newly introduced vowel-consonant syllable (VC; seen only once here in the syllable /a::v/). Before I explain more about her sounds, let's review some of the basic concepts and terms used when discussing sound production. Refer the the following diagrams as you read along to help make better sense of everything. The first diagram includes all of the consonant sounds of English and is generally referred to as a Phoneme Chart. The second shows the relative spacing of vowels in English and is referred to as the Vowel Chart. Things are about to get pretty "linguistic-y," so if you came for the video that's not here, this is probably a good time to bail!

PLACE, MANNER, VOICING
When we describe the phonetic properties of consonant sounds in any language, we identify them by their place of articulation, the manner in which they are produced, and whether they are voiced or voiceless. In the phoneme chart, place of articulation is shown along the top column. The far left corresponds to the front part of the vocal tract (i.e., the lips) and moves back in the mouth as you move to the right of the chart. Manner of articulation is shown running from top to bottom in the left-most column. I'm not quite sure if there is any reason for the order of the different manners of articulation. When there is a pair of symbols in one box of the phoneme chart, this indicates a voiced/voiceless pair of phonemes. In such a pair, the left symbol is always voiceless and the right symbol always voiced. For example, /p/ is a voiceless bilabial plosive (or stop), and /b/ is a voiced bilabial plosive. Listen to their difference as you say the words "pop" and "bob" to yourself. That difference between those two words is referred to as a voicing contrast.

Vowel sounds on the other hand are described by the approximate location where they are produced inside of the mouth (e.g., high, middle or low; front, center, or back) and if they are produced with lip rounding (i.e., /o, u/) or not. We can't explain vowels by their articulators because there is no contact between articulators like there is for consonants. We try to describe the relative location of the tongue in the mouth (as best we can. . .vowels are very tricky!) We don't specify voicing with respect to vowels because in English all vowels are produced with vocal fold vibration. We also don't talk about manner because they are all produced the same way, as continuants with a steady steam of air flowing through vibrating vocal cords.

PLACE
Place of articulation, as mentioned in a previous post, refers to where in the mouth a sound is produced, and if any part or parts of the tongue are also included in the creation of that sound. For example, the phoneme /b/ is produced with two lips coming together and apart, so it has a bilabial (or two lip) place of articulation. The sound /v/ in English is made with the upper teeth on the lower lip, so this is referred to as having a labiodental (or lip and teeth) place of articulation.

MANNER
Manner of articulation describes how a sound is made. For example, a plosive (or stop) consonant is made by temporarily stopping (or blocking) the flow of air coming from the lungs and through the vocal folds with two articulators. Stops can be either nasal (i.e., with air flowing through the nose) or oral (i.e., with air flowing through the mouth). A bilabial stop consonant stops the air at the lips to produce /b, p/ or /m/. Other manners of articulation include fricatives, which involve forcing air through tightly constricted articulators and causing turbulence, such as for the sounds /f, v, s/ and /z/. In English we also produce affricates, which are a combination of stop and fricative consonants such as the sounds in "church." This sound is produced as a combination of /t/ and the sound in "shush." We also have approximates, where articulators come close together and air flows smoothly such as for the sounds /w, j/, and our lateral approximant /l/, which is produced with air flowing off the sides of the tongue and can be heard in the word "like." Then there is the infamous /r,/ which so many people have difficulty producing, and has inspired loveable cartoon characters such as Elmer Fudd ("Why that wascly wabbit!").

So far, for place, Del has produced bilabial, labiodental, alveolar, and velar sounds. For manner she has used stops (nasal and oral), fricatives, affricates, and approximants. She favors voicing over voiceless sounds (although I have heard her use /t/ and /p/, there are no voiceless consonants produced in this language sample), and has yet to venture into the elusive and tricky land of L and R.

As always, I will try to capture her amusing and intriguing vocal play on video for your viewing enjoyment. Next post will be much shorter and accompanied by a video of some kind!

Milk milk milk milk milk milk milk

Happy 2011 to you all. If things go as the alarmists, conspiracy theorists, and religious fanatics world-wide would have us believe, we have less than two years left on this planet. So live life for today, and make every moment count! Even if the world doesn't end on 12/21/12, those are still good mottos to live by.

If you haven't figured out from the title of this post, Del's absolute favorite sign is MILK! But before I go into more detail about that, let me talk a little about her vocal babbling, as it has taken an amusing turn lately and I haven't written about her English language in a bit.

Babbling is Funny!
At nine months and a chunk of change, Del is everywhere all at once. She crawls so fast it seems impossible, the slap-slap-slap of her hands on our wooden floors beating out a rapid cadence as I track her down once again behind the door, the corner, the table. She pants a manic kind of baby laugh as she crawls, so delighted is she in her sheer speed and constantly progressing mobility. She also pulls up to stand on everything, as she is a very (very!) tall baby and can reach even the seat of our tall kitchen stools and the third shelf of our pantry, eek! I have replaced what I can with items that are Del friendly, but we are quickly outgrowing our apartment and Del has me running in circles around our three cozy rooms, doing my best to help her avoid catastrophe.

Her babbling is changing as rapidly as her physical ability. She now talks to herself in almost conversation-like intonation, with lots of /v/ (as in "van") and /sf/ (as in. . .wait, that's not an English phoneme!) sounds starting her typical consonant-vowel (CV) syllables. Her favorite time to really let loose vocally is when she is very tired and on the verge of sleeping, which means that I am inches away from her face as I am typically nursing her at this point. What tends to happen is this: her eyelids grow heavy and she stops eating to (presumably) pull away and fall asleep. Then she begins to serenade herself with any manner of ridiculous and fun sounds, growing louder and louder as she gets closer to sleep and her eyes grow more and more closed. This amuses me to no end, and I try my best to stifle laughter, which results in me shaking noiselessly as I suppress my giggles. My shaking, in turn, piques Del's curiosity, and she looks me square in the eye as she continues her soliloquy. Knowing she is looking at me, I dare not look at her, and I do my best to keep my eyes closed and feign sleep. But that Del is no stupid baby, and she knows Mama is awake under those eyelids. This is when the smacking, poking, and pulling begin. A little game of, "let's see how much she'll let me get away with before she admits she's still awake!" Needless to say, it's a hilarious situation that I know I will look back on and miss sorely. The only regret I have is that I never remember to bring the video or tape recorder to bed with us, so I have yet to capture this magical vocal play that I am so fortunate to be regaled with.

As far as I can remember (I'm not taking the meticulous linguistic notes I once promised myself), Del has added /v/, /s/ (as in "sun"), /p/ (as in "pun"), /f/ (as in "fun") and the occasional /t/ (as in "ton") to her list of sounds she plays around with. There are lots of other little sounds in there, and I will make it a point to take a sampling of her babbling sometime soon to share more accurately what she's been doing with her vocal cords and articulators lately. In addition to new consonant sounds, Del has really been enjoying playing with the pitch of her voice, or how high or low it is. She likes to lay her head alongside mine and hold an open /a/ (as in "hot") sound, which I then try to match. Then she goes up and down in pitch, waiting for me to match her in pitch before she moves on to the next one. I believe this is her way of exploring intonation, or the rise and fall of pitch that we utilize in speech to distinguish words from one-another and denote emotion, among other things.

But enough about that, we have a new video, hooray! The computer hell that Daddy F and I have been dealing with the last few months is finally over and we have an updated, shiny, quick and fantastic machine that (gasp!) has enough free space on it for me to edit videos with, whee! In addition to the sign MILK seen in the video, Del has added the letter "D" to her handshapes and has adapted her way of signing CHANGE (palms together with a turn of the wrists) and BANANA (pointed finger of one hand pressed repeatedly into the open palm of her other hand). We don't know yet what D means, but she signs it frequently and has for almost a week now, so sooner or later we'll figure it out, and by that time it will likely morph into something else that we will take another week or so to recognize. Oh my, but this language stuff is tricky (and fun!).

Oh banana!

It's nine in the morning on football Sunday, Del is sleeping soundly (fingers crossed), Daddy F and I are in PJs on the couch with hot mugs of tea, and the skies outside are grey and gloomy. It almost feels like actual winter here in the land where palm trees trump pine trees and where tourists think it's swimming weather even when it's 45 degrees and raining. I say that I miss "the seasons," but I think what I mean is that I miss the beauty of autumn and the fun and surprise of spring. I certainly don't miss the four months of frigid air and slate-colored skies. Admittedly, a Midwest winter leaves much to be desired. Mountains, for example. And sunshine. But since that is where I am from and the winters there are dark and cold, today is one of those rare California days that has me feeling like I'm home. So I invite the nostalgia in to hang out for a while, it being the season and all, and hunker down with us for a few hours of touchdowns and slipper socks.

But before I go, we must of course have a quick chat about language!

ASL charges onward!
Del added a new sign to her set about a week ago, which Daddy F and I had been trying to decipher. She very carefully makes the sign for "D," and then bends and unbends her index finger. Since this is fairly close to her name sign, we were wondering if she was trying to sign her name. We also guessed she could be signing "do-do?" because her daddy signs that to her all the time. Neither of these seemed like the right guess, and didn't line up with typical development, as I was expecting her next few signs to represent tangible things (nouns) like cereal or toy or water. So we just continued to encourage her by responding to the new sign in different ways, hoping that idiot mom and dad would sooner than later figure out what our clever little lady has been trying to tell us for a week now.

Then, (pah!) it all came together. . .

Earlier this morning Daddy F, Del and I were all chatting with Grandma J on the video phone (VP). Del recognized her Grandma right away and got very excited and started waving. I sat Del between Daddy F and I on the couch and attempted to eat my oatmeal as Del climbed all over me and lunged for my breakfast. I did my best to restrain her on my lap and continued to eat, while Grandma laughed at Del's antics. Then Grandma told us she saw Del sign the new "D" sign with finger wiggle that we had just told her about. I looked at Del and sure enough, she was still signing it. I still didn't know what she wanted, but I knew she was hungry so I handed her to daddy and grabbed a banana from the kitchen. When I gave it to her she got really excited (more so than usual. . .she loves to eat and really loves bananas so banana eating is typically an exciting event), and signed her new sign again. Then again. And looked at me with the expression that looked like, "Finally mommy! What took you so long?" and Daddy F signed "banana" and Del flapped her arms and laughed and signed her version of "banana" once again and it was like magic. It was so incredible not just to learn what she was trying to say and to have it reinforced that she is truly communicating with us, but to see her gain trust in us, that we will try to figure out what she wants to say.

The She-Beast Roars (alternate title: Del's sound exploration continues)

My oh my how the days fly by. Here I am, desperately late in buying my airplane tickets for a trip home for the holidays, and I barely registered that Thanksgiving has come and gone so quickly. Again. It would seem I still find wonder in the rapidity of life. It still surprises me when I blink and I'm this old. Sitting right here. On this day of all days. And my daughter is nearing nine months old. I ponder such thoughts and can't help but wonder: is this what drives us humans in our lives to learn and do and accomplish? Is that what drives me? The incessant feeling as though the passing of time is like gravity towards the future, pulling us along, every day closer to our demise than our inception. Is that what makes us stop to savor the magic and beauty of the tiny moments in life? Is that why I get caught up staring at Del, trying to memorize what her face looks like this very moment? Life and language are both fleeting and ephemeral like that. The perfect words come out to match the moment just experienced, and then poof! they're both gone, dissipated into the ether and forever after relying on our tricky memories to lock those moments, those images, those words down in some cerebral vault to be brought forth and enjoyed at some point in the future.

Wow, ok. Major digression there. Just feeling a little mortal lately. Something to do with motherhood, I'm thinking.

Onto the declared subject of this blog: Del's growling. And screeching. And noise making in general. It is delightful and exciting and only very rarely is it so terrible that I have to hand her off to Daddy F so I can run outside and give my ears a break. She stopped babbling a few weeks back, seemingly to focus her energy on signing and how to make the most monstrous sounds possible for an eight-month-old. She will get super excited when I'm feeding her and will start grunting and flapping her arms like she wants to fly out of her high chair. I have to trick her with silly dances and songs to get the spoon in her mouth while she's grinning at her ridiculous mama. After babbling pretty consistently on the /b/ and /d/ sounds a few weeks/months back, Del has now started to play with all kinds of nonlinguistic sounds. Or rather, non English sounds, such as tongue clicking and velar frication and raspberries and lip popping and "yayayayaYA!" She has started to produce some variegated, or varied, babbling, such as "badaga," where she alternates between different consonants but stays on the same vowel. She makes the /k/ (as in "key") sound often now, along with /g/ (as in "go"), and a laterally lisped /s/ (similar to the sound in "see" but said like Sylvester from Looney Tunes).

Her signing continues to astound me. I just can't get over the fact that this tiny human is already actively communicating in symbols. She has two signs that she uses very consistently, but she uses them in different ways. Her most common sign is "change," which she will initiate with us to let us know she needs to be changed. She also signs it while she is being changed and waits for affirmation from us, then smiles. She signs "milk," but not yet as a request. She will identify what it means by signing it often while she's nursing, but she hasn't initiated it yet to let me know she's hungry. She does that by panting and laughing maniacally as she grabs at the front of my blouse! Just another form of communication! Gotta say I'm looking forward to her growing out of that one.

I have videos to share, just having a bit of difficulty getting them up for various computer-related annoyances. I'll have two or three clips posted by the end of the weekend.

Happy (almost) Friday to you all. Any fun plans for the weekend?