Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The Utility Sign

We've been working with Emmy on her signing. Not really pushing it, but it's been fun for us to be able to see what she's thinking since she can't really verbalize things yet. We chose her school becasue they also teach sign language, and they've been able to reinforce what we've learned and even teach her some new ones! Just today we were playing and she saw a cat on tv and started "feeling her whiskers" which is the sign for cat. It's amazing that she can do that!

Emmy has started a new fascination with things that fly in the air. There's airplanes, birds, and butterflies of course. For butterflies and airplanes she puts her hands above her head and waves her fingers to sign. It's not the "real" sign for either butterfly OR airplane but it works for her for both. Even when she's sitting in the house and hears an airplane she will stop, point at the window and do the sign for airplane.

We decided that Emmy might really like the butterfly exhibit at the Museum of Natural Science. It's the coolest place where there are just hundreds of butterflies flying around in a simulated rainforest. (We did find out that even her little curls frizz in "rainforest climate." Looks like we might be using baby gel come Houston summer.) Some of them will even come land on you. Emmy did like to look at the them and tell us what she saw, but overall she gave it an, "eh"...not as bad as the aquarium last week (can you tell we're ready for warm weather and being able to just play outside.)


We did get a big kick when a friendly butterfly came and landed on Blake's hand! I snapped this cool pick as it flew away.


We got a surprise yesterday in Houston when out of the blue it started snowing. We wore flip flops on Monday and yesterday it snowed.

Well turns out that the same sign works for snow as butterfly and airplane. It works for everything. I guess if it gets your point across, why not! If it comes out of the sky, this is what Emmy says it is!