Ready Made Post

My lovely friend posted her aim this afternoon to list her daughter's current words and signs. I've been meaning to write a post about this, as in the couple of months since I last posted (and worried about J-cub's lack of speech), we've had an explosion of words and signs, so much so that J-cub is frequently frustrated by us as he signs clearly and fluently and we look at him blankly, before rushing to search through our signing books, flashcards and DVDs to figure out what he's saying. I've tried to keep a record of them, and have a sticky note on my desktop with them all ready and raring to be shared.

So without further ado, here is my (probably incomplete) list of J-cub's current communications.

Signs:

(grouped in tens for easy counting)

more, baby, milk, food, apple, hi/bye, Daddy, Nanna, duck, bird

rabbit, giraffe, elephant, lion, tiger, cat, crab, fish, monkey, caterpillar

ants, teddy, cuddles, ball, nappy, where, what, octopus, flower, shush

frog, banana, yoghurt, car, sheep, trousers, shoes, orange, boat, book

grapes, camera, bath, stairs, hat, bee, telephone, listen, look, no

yes, draw, dummy, bed, penguin, Hannah, rainbow, tired, clean, dirty

teeth, drink, music, enough, no/stop, guitar, snake, hungry, yummy, nappy

pain, medicine, sleep

Animal Noises:

Snake [ssssssss]

Dog [ooo ooo]

Monkey [ooo ooo eee eee]

Mouse [eee eee eee]

Cat [yow]

Lion/Tiger/Elephant/Dinosaur [loud roaring/screaming sound]

Words:

(this doesn't include words which he used well before a year old but then stopped using)

duck

Mama/Mummy/Mum/Mammy

Dada/Daddy/Dad

garden [dardeh]

this/that/down/there [all sound similar but are accompanied by a point to indicate which he means]

dirty [dirdee]

tasty [daysdee]

nice [niiiiii]

knock knock

circle

Po

Dorothy [doradee]

ta-dah!

sorry [dowee]

Pop!

boo

no

baby

hiya

toast [doas]

Bagpuss [bag-puh]

Catey [tateee!]

ho-ho-ho

snowman [do-dah]

kitty

jumper [dumper]

shoes

blue [boo]

and according to his keyworker at nursery:

Tom Bradley [one of his 'friends' who he's apparently been shouting at all day today ;)]

Day 35 - Milk please!

(Monday August 23rd)

Not much happened today, my hayfever tablets stopped working and/or I started to come down with a cold.

In communication news, J-cub used signing for the first time without prompting or seeing something that he knows the sign for. It was a few hours after he'd woken up, when (if I was on the ball) I would normally have started asking him if he was ready for bed. I'd said nothing, and so he let me know it was time by coming over to the sofa, picking up a cushion and placing it on the floor, then sitting on it and signing 'milk'.

We spent the rest of the day mostly covered in chalk.

Day 28 - Shopping and signing

(Monday August 16th)

J-cub and I went on a much-needed trip to Tesco today. We've been home for a whole week and managed not to do any food shopping at all, so the cupboards were quite literally bare. I had a massive shopping list and a very tired baby, but no other time to do it so we didn't have much choice.

Despite his tiredness, J-cub was a little angel. On arrival, we walked from the car to the front of the store to get a trolley. J-cub walked next to me, holding my hand. He's never done that before, he thinks hand-holding is the devil's work and usually refuses point blank or tries to pull his arm off. Today, after a little squeal, he accepted I wasn't going to change my mind and he walked happily along. It was all hot and sunny, and loads of people were smiling and cooing at him. And I must admit, he was quite the little cool dude:

He put up with sitting in the trolley for nearly an hour, he only threw a few things on the floor, and he happily chewed on a bag of frozen peas when his gums got too much to bear.

My Proudest Mummy Moment Ever came when we got to the checkout, I pushed the trolley up next to the conveyor belt, and started unloading. J-cub turned around, saw what I was doing, and started helping. Seriously. He took all the items he could reach and carefully placed them on the conveyor belt. Except for the baby spinach, which he threw on the floor. I also rescued the eggs from his grasp, just in case. But other than that, he was amazing! He got a yummy and very un-baby-friendly jam-filled Welsh cake for his troubles.

When we'd put all the shopping back in the car, we returned the trolley and walked up to Boots to get some bits and bobs. Again, he walked along, holding my hand. We encountered two small dogs, and J-cub barked at them. Really. His animal noises now include monkey ('Eeee-eeee-eeee'), cat ('eooooow'), snake ('sssssss') and dog ('oooo oooo'). He had a mini-meltdown in Boots but quickly fell asleep when we got back in the car.

Later on, when Jamie was home, we played our new favourite game of Google image search. This involves one parent sitting where they can't see the laptop, while the other searches for ducks, or monkeys, or fish, or whatever. And the other parent has to guess what it is from J-cub's signs/sounds.

Previously, he'd done monkey.

Tonight, he signed giraffe, fish, crab, lion, apple, baby, nappy and milk, and made sounds for dog, cat, snake and monkey, and said 'Duck'. At the end of the game, the buzzer sounded indicating his milk was warmed. He picked up a cushion, lay down on the floor with it and signed 'milk'.

I'm so so happy we've stuck with the baby signing, it's amazing to be able to communicate with him all of a sudden.

Day 24 - Naps are for losers

(Thursday August 12th)

I hadn't written any notes for today, so had to look back through my emails to Jamie (who was at work) to find out what we'd done. After a very late night last night, J-cub and I got up at 10am. 10! It didn't seem like a longer rest than normal though, as he'd gone to bed past midnight and I surely would have spent some time chilling before I went to bed.

At 12pm, 2 hours after he got up, he looked tired so I put him down for a nap. He gurgled and whinged for a while, I gave up and got him up again for his lunch.

At 2pm I emailed Jamie saying:

I can't actually believe he might have gone to sleep. He finished his lunch, threw the bits he didn't want over his shoulder, had a long drink, then came and climbed on the sofa with me, I read the Gruffalo's Child to him about 6 times, we got scared of all the monsters, then played happy monsters to get unscared, then had some songs and lots of raucous laughter, he got the hiccups, then started swiping at his eyes. Are you tired, my love? I asked. He climbed off my lap, toddled over to the door and grabbed the handle. I swooped him up into the cot and have literally not heard a peep since. Thank heavens for small mercies.

Apparently, he woke again not long after and I was shattered by the end of the day. But he spontaneously signed 'teddy bear' and signed 'crocodile' in imitation of Justin on Something Special. So not all bad ;)

Day 10 - Apple

Photo from earlier in the week, when J-cub spent a large proportion of his meal time balancing an apple core on his sippy cup.

J-cub's eating repertoire has extended slightly over recent weeks, but is still mostly centred around fruit and yoghurt. He's gone off pears, but is loving apples. Today he ate chunks of Pink Lady, while pointing at my Golden Delicious and making 'Give me that!' noises, until I acquiesced and gave it to him. He kept signing 'more, more', even while there were still slices in his bowl. We counted them, I signed 'apple' each time he pointed to one, and said 'apple' over and over. Towards the end of the meal, he started saying 'Ah' while pointing at the apple. When I said 'apple' again, he made a 2-syllable sound which mimicked my intonation.

When he'd finished, we went into the garden so I could hang out the laundry while he played, and I brought along the leftover slices of apple for him to nibble on. His 'Ah' sound started approaching 2 syllables, and the second one started sounding a lot like 'l'. By the time Jamie got home, J-cub was proudly holding up a slice of apple and saying 'Ah-l'.

Apart from 'Dada', 'Mama', and 'Uh-oh', he really doesn't have any other words. In the past (well before he turned 1) he had several words, including 'Duck', 'Cat', 'Tilly', 'Hey', 'Hi', 'Teeth' and various others. They've all fallen by the wayside though, and are now a faint memory. We mostly get lots of very nasal snorts and sniffs, shrieks and screams, and not much else.

I'm so excited that he might be starting to speak, especially if it means he can communicate with us more rather than get frustrated and scream. He's also signing more and more, although quite literally, he is signing 'more' all the time, which can be quite frustrating for me when I don't know what he means.

At least we have the old standby requests of 'give me a kiss/cuddle' which always work, and the utterly cute 'show me your tummy' which we discovered yesterday and have been using at every opportunity since.

Day 7 - Other people's toys

I took J-cub with me to work for the first time today. The boys I look after live in a gorgeous, huge house, which is full of 14 years' worth of accumulated toys. We arrived at 8am, and the boys were still asleep after a hard night's work playing DS. After their Dad had left, we explored the kitchen, utility room, playroom and lounge, and J-cub was beside himself with joy at all these new toys.

They have a lovely play table with a Brio train set, which J-cub didn't really understand but liked picking up the trains and carefully placing them on the floor.

We found an old keyboard under the piano, upon which I gave the boys keyboard lessons when they were little (like most of their musical instruments, their interest waned as they grew older). J-cub sang and banged the keys and made a complete racket, it was lovely to watch. Our piano is currently covered in boxes of stuff, and I haven't played at all since before he was born. I'll have to rectify that soon.

After his nap we made some more racket, which woke the boys and they played with him while I cooked lunch. They found an old box full of play food and spent ages tipping it out, putting it all back in the box, then tipping it out again. After half an hour, one of the boys commented "Babies are tiring, aren't they?" :D

Part of my role involves 'shadowing' my main charge, E, in school. I am technically a teaching assistant, but in a behavioural therapy capacity, whereby I prompt him through his work and his school day in the least intrusive way possible, until he learns through repetition and reinforcement how to do things for himself. I use a lot of gestures which have been adapted from Makaton and British Sign Language, all of which allow me to communicate with him without the other children being aware that I'm telling him to stop pinching his skin or to look at his teacher. I explained to him about the CBeebies programme Something Special, and taught him some of the signs that J-cub uses. Within minutes he was generalising the ABA techniques I use with him, to teach J-cub the signs being demonstrated in the programme. It was amazing to watch.

Towards the end of my shift the boys started to run out of baby-wrangling patience, so I set up a ping-pong tournament to give them a break. It lasted for about 5 minutes, before J-cub decided he wanted in on the action, and stole the ball. We swapped to playing table football, but J-cub swiped that ball too.

Game over!

Apologies for my absence (2)

Quite simply - I've had a bereavement this week which I won't elaborate on as it's far too personal and complicated. I'm going to try and jump straight back into the swing of things with a bit of a catch-up.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The introduction of a magna-doodle (and by magna-doodle, I mean a Tesco's own version which was considerably cheaper) into our lives courtesy of Auntie Rachel has unleashed J-cub's inner artist (I couldn't remember my son's name while I was typing that sentence. What does that say about me?!). Once he worked out which way round to hold the pen, there was no stopping him. Last weekend, we popped down to our big YMCA superstore, and there was this lovely wooden easel just inside the door (the fact that it was In The Night Garden was just icing on the cake). We immediately grabbed it and asked how much it was. The poor boy who'd just spent ages assembling it informed us it was £4.99, and begged us to take it home whole. We happily complied (and were also given 4 cups for paint and a bag full of chalk and crayons) and squeezed it onto the back seat next to J-cub, where he cooed happily at it until we got home. He's now mastered crayon (on paper) and chalk (on everything). There's a dry-wipe board on the other side, but he's not getting pens until he's about twelve.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I've been gardening during the bright spells we've had this week (the sun which apparently is beating down on the rest of the country has mostly been avoiding us), and J-cub has loved 'helping'. You can tell from his long-sleeved top and heavy dungarees that despite the sun, it was fricking cold. He was a fab helper though, he dug over all the patches I'd just weeded (without eating any soil!), he picked strawberries, tasted them, and spat them out again (I swear he's the only child in the world not to like strawberries), and mostly practised his walking-on-grass skills (which, he informs me, will be useful for future gardening times when speed is a necessity).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

We've been for walks. Walks which don't involve a sling and don't involve a buggy. This is a whole new world for me; a world where it takes an hour to walk round the block and every ant, stone, cat, leaf, earwig, bin and garden must be examined carefully and exclaimed over. It's wonderful.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

J-cub can reach and operate the door handle. Oh dear. He hasn't yet managed to do so whilst pulling the door towards him, but I fear it can't be long.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

J-cub's signing has come on in leaps and bounds. I don't think I've said much about baby signing, but we went to a few Tiny Talk classes when he was about 9 months old, but they were on a Saturday and cut into our family weekends, so I bought some books (My First Signs, My First Animal Signs and Sign About Meal Time) and we've taught him ourselves. The CBeebies programme Something Special, aimed at children aged 4-7 with learning difficulties, has quickly become J-cub's favourite and he's slowly picking up the more regularly used signs from the show (and can do a passable monkey impression after the vastly annoying "oo-oo-ah-ah-ooh" monkey song).

So to have a quick recap of his current signs, J-cub currently uses the following: hello, bye-bye, baby, clean/wash, tired, bed, biscuit, apple, food, drink, gentle, cuddles, more, yes, no .... that's all I can remember at the moment.

I love it when he strings signs into sentences. Over the past couple of weeks while he's been poorly, we've been letting him have digestive biscuits as a) he'll eat them and b) they cheer him up when he's feeling wretched. After a few days of us asking "Do you want a 'gestive biscuit?", he started signing "gentle, biscuit". Whether it's because gentle sounds like 'gestive', or because it's gentle on his tummy, or just coincidence, it's lovely, it works, and it's now his most commonly used sign. In the photo above he's half-way between gentle and biscuit.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

J-cub has barely eaten since his ear infection of a couple of weeks ago (and that's on top of all the barely-eating he's been doing since his birthday). Baby-led weaning is all about letting them set the pace, and not forcing them when they don't want to eat. But when your baby eats nothing but yoghurt and digestive biscuits and peanut butter sandwiches and ricecakes for weeks on end, it's hard not to be concerned.

This evening though, he ate. I made him Swedish meatballs with a tomatoey sauce and peas. After some initial reluctance and suspicion, he wolfed it down. Then he ate a ricecake (we weren't really prepared for him finished what was first offered), and then a massive bowl of yoghurt. And he ate the meatballs with a fork, and the yoghurt with a spoon (well, mostly). I was such a proud mummy. That'll probably fill him up for the next couple of months anyway.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

How beautiful is my boy? We've been having a bit of a stand-off about baths recently, he's screamed as soon as his feet hit the water, and cried throughout enforced hair washing which makes me feel terrible. We haven't been swimming at all since our last term of Water Babies finished, and I think he's just got a Thing about water. This evening though, having sweated heavily through last night's sleep and today's two naps, then eaten meatballs in tomato sauce and copious amounts of yoghurt for tea, we had no option.

With a little help from a small green cup, J-cub and water rekindled their previous affection. He found it hilarious when he accidentally spilt water from the cup onto his face (which made hair washing much easier), decided that bubbles were yummy (he picked them up individually and ate them!), and drank water from the cup and directly from the bath whilst lying on his front. We stayed in until his lips turned purple. It was lovely.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So that's all for now. I might do a Saved post later, then again I might not. I had a good one for today y'see. I'm off now to drink my cares away with a very rare alcoholic drink (rare as in I don't often have alcohol, not rare as in a thousand-year-old bottle of whiskey or something) or six. Night night.