Baby, What's Your Sign?

Because Collin is speech delayed, we've really embraced sign language with him. It's saved us a lot of tantrums because he's got a way to tell us, "hey, I'm thirsty over here!" Or, he can tell us, "Cracker! Enough with the cheese already!" There's nothing like the smile of relief on his face when I speak aloud what he's been trying to tell me with his approximations of the signs we've taught him and he knows he's been understood.

But, the opposite is a comedy of sorts too. He's totally misunderstood all the time as well. When he has a new sign, he relishes practicing it in all kinds of situations. Or, he has favorite signs that he uses for no apparent reason and he has no problem having their meaning totally misinterpreted.

Today, the following statements were heard after recognizing Collin's signs to me:

"Honey, that's not an airplane, that's a cupboard"

"Collin, we're not swimming, we're eating."

"No Collin, again, that's not an airplane, that's actually play-doh."

"Why do you keep saying swimming? We aren't swimming. We are SWINGING. We're at the park, not the pool."

"I don't hear an airplane; but, I do hear the can opener."

As you can tell, "swimming," and "airplane," are his two favorite signs and if you mix up any sounds sounding remotely similar to swim/swimming or airplane/fly or anything sounding anything like any kind of motor or heck anything at all he'll think it's a plane or want to talk about planes.

I blame Aunt Robyn. She graduates from pilot training next month and in hopes to get him excited about it, we're working on getting him to recognize her in pictures and to get him to at least associate her with airplanes and flying. It's clearly working. I think he might become a pilot, or the first kid to dive a plane underwater.

Here's Collin and Aunt Robyn. He points at her now and signs, "airplane" most of the time. I'm not sure if he realizes that means she flies an airplane or if he thinks that she is, in fact, an airplane. We'll see when he sees her, I guess.