give me a sign

yummy toes
Originally uploaded by Kristy and Eva.

i'm too sleepy to write much (and i should say more, as i've had a challenging day and those kinds of days deserve to be recorded as much as the super-fun-lucky days do), but i had to provide this little news bulletin:

eva did her first sign yesterday! (the astute reader may have caught the unintentional foreshadow... it has to do with a certain "ghak".) she's been fascinated with lights the past several days, and stares at them and points them out (by saying ghak), and as of yesterday, she reaches her arm up to sign for them. (yippee!) the sign (as i do it) is a fist on an upstretched arm then flicking all your fingers downward. she sticks her arm up and bends her fingers in and out, but pointing up, and as her own little flourish, twists her wrist, too.

this first happened (or i first noticed?) at jenny's house, where eva was hanging out under a nice overhead light. i'm fairly confident i'm not reading too much into this (as in, "guess what? she's started doing long division in her head!") because she did it several times, and because jenny just assumed she was signing before i mentioned it, but thought i already knew and thus i hadn't pointed it out. i'm really excited because it's her first verifiable attempt to communicate in a more direct way (beyond crying, facial expressions, etc). that's huge in babyland.

you know, she also tries to say/indicate "dog" (if we're lucky, it's "dah...guh" but more likely just "guh", where the d and o are apparently silent"). the associated sign is sticking out one's tongue and panting like a dog. before this light incident, i was starting to wonder if she was trying to sign for dog but not sticking out her tongue very far, because when she's interested in the dog she opens her mouth and *moves* her tongue, but you can see how this is hard to discern, since that's something she does roughly, you know, all day long. in hindsight, maybe i should have picked a clearer sign for her favorite subject.

anyway, i've gone on long enough with the minutiae of such things (be thankful i'm not really exited this week about her poos or something), but i'm just so happy to be on this little journey with her. it's fun to watch it unfold and see where it all will lead...

photo: i took this the same day as that recent thumb-sucking one. see, she puts things other than her thumb in her mouth on occation. (can you tell i'm getting a bit sensitive about the whole thumb thing? :) thoughts on that for another post, maybe...)