Communication

I've been wanting to write a blog entry about language for a little while now. It has been just fascinating watching Hayden learn how to communicate with us. She has all sorts of methods of letting us know stuff - gestures, sign language, grunts, shrieks, words, etc. Her receptive language (how well she understands what we say, for those of you who aren't developmental dorks like me) has just taken off. We cannot say the word banana without actually being ready to give her a banana, or show her a picture, or she will run to where we keep the bananas and try to climb up to reach them. She can follow simple directions such as "take the cup to Mommy" or "put that in the garbage" quite well. If we say, let's go outside and go for a walk, she'll stop what she's doing, run to the gate and be ready to go. One of the funniest instances is when she wants to get a bite of something and we say, you have to sit down to eat and she plops right down on the floor and looks at us expectantly!

She's getting so good at identifying things, both in the real world and in books. We have a big picture book that has maybe 20 different first words with big pictures on one page - things like duck, crib, cup, flower, boat, etc - and when she's feeling focused, she can point to almost all of them in response to "where is the...." And she's getting pretty good at the body parts game, too -she can identify head, feet, toes, hair, belly and knees with regular accuracy.

Where's your head, Hayden?

As for Hayden telling us what she's thinking, it's really quite incredible what a 14 month old can communicate to you. She has quite the repetoire of baby signs, which she uses daily: dog, cat, duck, elephant, lion, more, cold, eat, drink, music, airplane, siren, swing, baby, hat, car/motorcycle. I think there could be a few others added soon if we keep working at it - book, shoes, hippo (thanks to a visit to the Sanford homestead!), hot, cheese. I think elephant and lion are my two favorite signs - they are usually done with noises too! Her roar is so cute!

Hayden signing elephant...

and lion! (rowwr!)

I'm also amazed that she's made the leap of using the sign "more" from food - we introduced it at meal time - to using it to ask for "more" of all sorts of different things. When we make a silly sound (like a vacuum) or sing a song (head, shoulders, knees and toes) or tickle her, she signs "more" very vigorously! She even signed it to Blizz when she was making her groaning growl noises today! When we were in North Carolina visiting my grandmother (Hayden's great grandmother!) for her 90th birthday, we ended up singing Happy Birthday twice because Hayden signed "more" after we finished it the first time (see below).

Not only does she sign, but she also is starting to "talk" as well. She can say Mama and Daddy, though she still doesn't do it regularly to refer to us. We have two great books called Mama, Mama and Papa, Papa and she has identified both of them by saying those words quite clearly. She says duck (and signs it) whenever we see a rubber duckie in a book. She says "dowww" for down and says up. (Often one right after the other, if we let her play the up/down game on the bed.) She's also started saying wa-wa for water. And during our trip to North Carolina, she started saying a version of dooley (sometimes it's just dee, sometimes it's doo-ee) for my parents' yellow lab, or really, any picture of a yellow lab. She also can woof/arf for a dog, such as the Doggies book by Sandra Boynton. And of course, she can say Uh-Oh with perfect clarity. She uses it both in the right context (something gets dropped) and sometimes just for fun - though usually then it's more of an uh-uh-oh. And she can say hi quite clearly, in a cute little voice, usually with a little wave, and often to perfect strangers who are caught by surprise and can't help but smile and respond!

Hayden checks out her favorite dog noises during her after-dinner book time.

Then of course, there's all the crazy shrieks and yells and grunts and babbles and giggles that she does that can't be captured by a camera. Her giggles and laughter are quite infectious - it's hard to be grumpy when Hayden finds something funny. Sometimes I think she screams just because she can - which usually makes me laugh, even if I don't want her to scream because we're out in public. And I'm not sure if "shhhhhh" is in her vocabulary yet! Luckily I'm not quite ready to shush her yet - we just love to hear her what she has to say!