Signing

Sasha has mostly stopped with her baby sign language. She does still sign stuff occasionally, but not very much.
It's understandable. Sasha is smart enough to notice that the rest of the world talks, not signs. So why bother? She figured that out long ago, so she rarely signed when we were out of the house or for strangers. Signing was mostly a thing that mommy did with her. My husband and older daughter did put effort into signing and learning the signs that Sasha knew, but Sasha knows it was mostly something mom encouraged and pushed. She'd sign for me and I'd cheer her on and it made me happy.
But if the rest of the world talks, that's where she's putting her efforts.

I am rethinking whether to continue to teach it to her as a second language. Originally it's intent was for her to be able to communicate with us while she was still learning how to talk. Her verbal vocabulary has surpassed her signing vocabulary now. So we shall see!

She's got some signs she still uses. Like "where?" and "more" and "bike". Especially "where?". That sign has become a fun little game for her. She likes to throw, drop, or hide objects then turn to us and ask us "where?". When we find it and give it to her, she hides it again and signs "where?" again. She can keep this up all day if we can keep up with her.

Just yesterday, Sasha was in her car seat and unbeknownst to us, she kicked off a shoe. I took her out of the car seat and started walking up to the house. She said "where?" and signed it at the same time. My husband and I remarked that we thought she was looking for Cassie and we continued upstairs. After we got upstairs, I set her down and noticed her shoe was missing.
"Oh no! Where is her shoe?", I said. Sasha chimed in by saying "where?" and signing "where?" again. We finally realized that when she originally said "where?", she was talking about her shoe. Oops! My husband had to run back down to the car to get her shoe.

The bug

There's been some sort of cold bug going through our family lately. Jon started out with it a few weeks ago and it hit him pretty long and hard.
We thought that the rest of us had escaped unscathed. My immune system seems to have been really strong the last two years or so. But of course it's the holidays, so I started getting sick two days before christmas eve. Fortunately, the worst of it was over by Christmas Eve and I felt recovered enough to be able to go to my family's christmas party.


However it was on Christmas eve that I noticed that I had some strange rash all over my neck. I don't know how long it was there before I noticed it. You can see it in this picture the best (click to enlarge), but it's still not clear. (Pic from the family Christmas party. Sasha was riding on a rocking horse, and I carried her, horsey and all, into the living room when it was time to open presents). It really had me worried. It couldn't be a heat rash as I wasn't hot and neither was my neck. I had a heat rash elsewhere on my body to compare it to, and the rashes looked different. I tried to look it up online, but anyone who has ever tried to diagnose a rash by google image search knows how disgusting and scary that can be. Ugh! Closest I could match it to was measles or rubella. Which made me think. Hrm, Sasha had just gotten her MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) shot earlier that week. She had been crabby and not feeling well also. The vaccines are made with weakened viruses, but it is possible to get reactions from the vaccines. Was it also possible for people to actually come down with the actual diseases from the vaccines??? Was it then possible to pass on that disease to other people around you? It was a scary thought! I was actually really worried that maybe Sasha gave me measles from her mmr shot! But the rash disappeared the next day so I have no idea what it was. I guess it wasn't the mmr shot at all. But you can bet that if the rash had spread or if it was still there the next day I would have been asking some questions to the doctors.

Meanwhile, Sasha was not feeling well yesterday. She was very crabby and she stopped eating again. Such bad timing! I'm afraid we're going to lose any gains we might have had. She is back to nursing like a newborn and refusing to eat. I think she probably needs the immunological protection that nursing provides right now but once she's done fighting off whatever bug it is she's suffering from, I'll have to reduce her nursing sessions again in an attempt to get her to eat. Blah! That will be no fun.

Sadly, Sasha signed a new sign yesterday. "Hurt". That was the first time she ever signed it, and I think she was trying to tell us she had a headache. Poor baby. She was so miserable.

She also signed another new sign today. "Banana", which she signed at the mall when we asked her if she wanted us to buy her a banana.

Sasha Can Moo....Can You?

Sasha has added some new "words" to her vocabulary...animal sounds! I've been working with her on those, especially now that she has a puzzle with pictures of animals on it that she likes to play with. She's also taken a new enjoyment in reading with me, and some of her books have animals in them also.
She can now Quack like a duck, Tweet like a bird, Woof like a dog, Moo like a cow, and Baa like a sheep. We're working on some other sounds too but I don't think I've heard them yet. Yesterday, I saw a flock of geese flying overhead while we were in a store parking lot. I pointed up in the air at them and said "Look Sasha! Birds!". She watched in rapt amazement at the geese flying through the air. She then signed the sign language for 'bird' and said "Tweet Tweet". Clever little girl!

Like I said, Sasha has a great interest in books lately. She'll grab a book from her bookcase, then she'll walk over to me. If I am sitting on the floor cross legged, she'll turn herself around so her back is facing me and will slowly walk herself backwards and sit herself down in my lap. That means it's time to read. She turns the pages and points at the pictures in her books, and I read to her or tell her what is going on in the pictures. I'm so glad that she is so interested in reading.

Sasha still has a mouthful of teeth coming in and several of those teeth look painful. My husband is still sick, and he's been trying to keep from spreading it to me or Sasha. Sasha has been a little more crabby than usual today and she's been grabbing at her neck. I'm not sure if that means she's getting a sore throat or not. I hope not! My husband says he feels absolutely miserable so I hope she is spared.

Demands

At the doctor's office waiting on her Daddy. She got a big kick out of the little chairs and the books and puzzles.

Lately, Sasha has been making requests. Or shall I say demands?
This past week, whenever I sit on the floor, Sasha will toddle up to me, sit in my lap, look me straight in the eyes with a stern expression, sign milk at me, and will grab at my shirt as if to say "Milk now woman...that's an order". She's always signed milk, but usually during nursing, not as a request to nurse until now. It's funny but it will quickly get old.
"Tea" is her newest sign. Of course. She's a little tea fiend. Again, it's as a request/order, not as a cute little "aww look mommy it's tea" kind of thing. It's like "Tea NOW mother". I'm pretty proud of her new sign.

Today she was playing with her cabbage patch doll and it was very cute. She was mothering it. She was feeding it a toy bottle, hugging and kissing it, dancing with it, making it dance, making it ride her toy car, and she gave it to her daddy to take care of a few times as well. She's been affectionate with her doll, her stuffed polar bear, and her stuffed doggy.
Actually, she's been super affectionate all week to everyone. Kisses for everybody, especially mommy! I swear I get like 50 spontaneous kisses a day from that sweet child. I can't imagine a more affectionate toddler.

She wants to give her daddy kisses too, but unfortunately he is sick. I had to take the night off work last night as he was ill. It came on very suddenly. Within an hour or two, he went from ok to unable to speak. He came down with a sore throat, his nose and ears and sinuses hurt. I think he had a headache and body ache as well but no fever. It was scary how fast it seemed to be spreading so I took him to the doctor. They were mostly useless. The rest of us have been ok. So far I'm feeling fine, Sasha is showing no signs of illness, and Cassie is ok too. I'm hoping that whatever he's got was something I got vaccinated against with my flu shot, thus passing immunity to Sasha. I hope. I just have to keep an eye on Cassie as she did not get a flu shot. I REALLY hope we don't have everybody sick! That would suck.

Baby Sign Language

Well, I'm overdue for a post on Sasha's sign language development. I've mentioned it in previous posts, especially when she learned a new sign, but I figured I'd put together a post and try to compile her current vocabulary. She just turned 14 months old. She signed her first sign (more) at 6 months, and I've been signing to her since she was two months old.
First, I'll try to list her signs. Wish me luck; I know I'll be coming back to edit this part as I remember more of them, as she's got a good sign language vocabulary.

• Sister/Cassie - her favorite or most often used sign


• Dad -the way she does this is cute. She points at her forehead, looks like think, or even worse, sometimes it looks like an 'L' on her forehead, like loser!


• more - she bumps her fists together


• all done


• all gone - she only does this with one hand


• eat


• drink


• milk


• water
• cereal - when she's eating her cheerios


• potty - she does this sign a lot! When anyone goes potty, when the toilet flushes, when she's currently going potty. Hope that means she'll potty train easy, haha!


• bath - one of her new favorite signs. Sometimes she literally makes motions across her whole body like she's washing up. arms, legs, and all.


• bird - she surprised me with this sign one day. I showed it to her when she was looking at some geese outside. Then later that day she pointed at the tv and signed bird. Yep, there was a bird on televison!


• dog - another favorite sign. She loves doggies. I wish she could see more of them as they make her so happy. She barks when she does this sign now


• tree - she only signs this when I sign it first.


• light - She loves lights! She points out every light in our hallway and can say 'light' also.


• telephone - as much as she loves telephones, she doesn't do this sign often but I've seen her do it.


• bye bye - bye bye, but I think most every baby can do this. She opens and closes her hands at head level. Funny thing is, she waits until the person leaves before she'll say bye bye to them. By that time, they're long gone.


• shoes - This girl LOVES her shoes. If she doesn't have her shoes on, she'll ask for them to be put on, usually by bringing us her shoes and sticking out her feet. But she has on rare occasion signed shoe


• socks- Her newest sign! She signed this one today. I didn't even know she knew this sign.


• hat - She hardly ever does this sign, only did it to copy me when she did do it


• baby signing time -she knows this as a phrase/song and as her sign language video, but not the individual words. One day I sang her the Intro song to the Baby Signing Time video (it's one of those annoying songs that sticks in your head) and she started signing "baby signing time"! I was impressed.


• sleep - instead of signing this across her whole face, she just signs this over her lips and does a funny little raspberry. But she really means she's tired when she does this!


• I know she knows more, I'll update this when I think of them

Some of her signs look similar, and I have a hard time distinguishing them. 'Milk', 'light', 'all done', 'bye-bye' sort of look the same the way she does them some times. I'm trying to get her to hold her hand up high over her head for the sign for 'light' so I can tell the difference but right now she opens and closes her hand at head level for 'light' and 'milk' and 'bye bye'. 'All done', she NORMALLY does with both hands but sometimes she gets lazy with it, then it looks like 'milk', light, etc.

Her signs are not precise by any means. By that, I mean her version of the sign does not look like the textbook version. But she has meaning behind them. When she signs 'all-done', she really means 'all-done', and she usually does it the same every time. In that respect, it is a true form of communication.

Suspiciously absent from her list is 'mom'! Nope, she won't sign Mom. She has signs for 'dad' and 'sister' but not 'mom'. Bummer!

She eats!

Sharing a bite with her big sister.

Finally! After much worry about Sasha's reluctance to eat, she is finally eating. She has been for the last week and a half, I think. Tonight, she ate a HUGE meal. Well huge for her. I made my barley beef skillet for dinner last night, and had plenty of left-overs. Tonight I heated up some left-overs for Sasha and even though I pulled out way more food than I thought she'd eat, she ate it all. She ate maybe a half cup portion of it, which is a lot for her! She does like that barley beef, but in general, she's finally started letting us feed her. It's a good thing too because I was worried about her weight. In general, she has never really taken to eating solid food, preferring instead to nourish herself entirely by nursing and cheerios.

And on the baby sign language front, Sasha signed a new word today: Bath. Once she got the hang of it, she was signing it nearly non-stop for a while. It was cute too because she verbally said "baa" while signing it too so I think she was saying AND signing "bath". She was pretty excited about it, and so was I.

New Words

IDK my BFF Jill?
Sasha's had a significant vocabulary increase lately, both verbally and with her sign language skills. Every day she adds a new word or two to her vocabulary. Let's see if I can remember it all.
At the park yesterday, Sasha was distracted by the geese and ducks at the wading pond. I showed her the sign for "bird" and it didn't even look like she was paying attention. But later in the evening, I saw her looking at the television and signing "bird". Sure enough, there was a bird on tv. Although, to be fair, when a Comcast commercial featuring talking turtles came on tv, she pointed at them and signed "dog" excitedly. The "bird" sign was a sign she learned on her Baby Signing Time videos, so she probably remembered it from there. She rediscovered the "more" sign. It used to be one of her favorite signs but she hadn't used it in months.

I noticed that when she sees my husband's glasses, she says the same thing every time. It sort of sounds like 'dassis'. Eventually I realized that she was trying to say 'glasses'. Sure enough, when I pointed at his glasses and asked her what they were, she said it clear as day. It's her version of the word 'glasses', and it sounds very cute.

Tea! Sasha is a little tea fiend like her dad. My husband has a nightly ritual where he makes at least a gallon or two of tea in one big batch and she supervises the whole process from start to finish. Then whenever he drinks tea, she says "tea!" and makes him give her some to drink. She LOVES tea. But it's so cute the way she says tea. There's like no vowel sound at all the way she says it. It's just the "t" sound only.

Sasha has been a comedian lately. She's always trying to make me laugh. She tickles my feet, puts her finger in my belly button, or blows raspberries on my skin. She puts stuff on her head or hangs stuff out of her mouth and looks at me to make sure I'm watching her while she shows off. She really puts on a show!

I should also add that Sasha's got a new tooth! But this time it's one of the molars. I'm sort of confused by this. I thought she would get her canine teeth before she started getting any molars? But she's drooling up a storm. Fortunately she isn't so crabby anymore. She was about two weeks ago but now she's mostly in good spirits.

Little Walker

Sasha has been walking for the past few weeks now and I still can't get over it. With her petite size, she looks like a little walking baby. Her little excited steps make me happy every time I see her. She's now walking around the house in circles. I'll sit down on the living room floor and she'll walk up to me and give me a big hug. Then she'll walk away from me towards our front door. Just before she reaches the door, she'll turns around and excitedly walk back to me, giggling and squealing, and gives me another huge hug. She keeps doing this repeatedly...wander away from mom....run back to mom and hug me. I know that babies do this sort of wander then return orbiting behavior when they first start becoming mobile but it still is really fun to watch. I know eventually the distances she will travel from me will grow farther and farther until she one day stops returning back to me and asserts her independant self. Until then, I'm enjoying it.

Cassie and Sasha have been having fun together. It really makes me happy to see the two of them playing and having a good time. When Cassie goes to school, Sasha signs her sign language equivalent of "Cassie" (we use the sign for girl as the sign that represents cassie). She'll often give me this concerned look and signs "Cassie" and I have to show her Cassie's room and explain that Cassie is not home, she's at school but will be back. After she looks at Cassie's bed, she finally becomes convinced that Cassie isn't there and has me take her to Cassie's pictures on the hallway wall. After she looks at the pictures for a while, she points at them, signs "Cassie" a few more times, then she's ready to go play something else. "Cassie" is by far her most commonly used sign. She has been signing eat, drink, and sleep a lot more lately though.

One thing that has us worried lately is Sasha's appetite, or lack of. I do wish she would eat more real food. Instead she mostly relies on nursing. I haven't posted the results of her 12-month doctor visit, but the news was disappointing. She had not gained any height, and barely any weight in the last 3 months. So we've been experimenting with different foods lately to see what we can and can't get her to eat. So far, it looks like she'll eat most anything her dad feeds her, but if I try to feed her she doesn't want it. We believe that because I've been the mean one that had to try to feed her foods she didn't like, she's suspicious of anything I give her. But in my defense, someone had to learn that she didn't like broccoli and zucchini, hehe. I wouldn't have known that without trying! She seems to basically like foods that her dad likes...and that's not much. He's pretty picky too. She likes meats, beef jerky, coffee, doughnuts, and tea. Alas I am not going to feed her coffee and doughnuts. We bought her some caffeine free herbal fruit teas from a local tea shop and she seems to be okay with those but they stain her clothes and face. She is still refusing milk in any form.
Today she did eat well, I admit. She ate some salmon with rice in the morning, then for dinner she ate some spicy jambalaya. Good girl!

A Chihuahua is NOT a dog...

Or so says baby Sasha.
My husband and Sasha walked over to the local 7Eleven. Along the way they saw someone walking their chihuahua. We have a lot of dogs in our apartment complex. Whenever Sasha sees a dog, she usually gets all excited, points at it, makes little barking noises, and does the sign language for dog. She saw the chihuahua, but she didn't really react like she normally does with a dog. So my husband told her, "Look Sasha, a dog!". He pointed at it and did the sign language for 'dog'.
Sasha looked at the chihuahua, looked up at my husband with her best 'Are you on crack?' expression on her face, and vehemently shook her head no. My husband tried several times to tell her that it was a dog but she maintained her stance that no, the chihuahua was NOT a dog.
Personally, I tend to agree with her. :)
Signing babies are so cute.

Signing and Language Explosion

I took two days of vacation, which gave me a four day weekend. I got to spend nearly every second of it with my little Sasha.
At first I noticed that she was very sleepy. She slept a lot more than usual. When this happens, it usually means one of two things. Either a growth spurt (which is usually accompanied by a huge baby appetite), or she is about to suddenly have some new major ability. She wasn't especially hungry so I figured she was going to learn something neat.
And she did! Suddenly one day, she was a signing baby. All those signs I've spent her whole life teaching her, she just suddenly started using. All in the same day! It was amazing. I spent the whole day nearly drop-jawed. My baby was talking to me. She's done a few of the signs before. But usually only for a day or so and not necessarily in the right context, and then she stopped. This seems different.
In her sleep, she would start to stir and whine, and signed "eat" without even opening her eyes. I'd feed her and she'd happily doze back off to sleep. She signed "more" when she wanted more of anything. She signed "eat" when she was hungry, and I didn't even know she was hungry yet because she hadn't even started fussing or whining yet. She signed "dog" when she saw a dog in the lobby of our building. She signed "light" when she was staring at our lights (LOVES lights, it's her obsession). She also said "ite" when she was pointing at the light and signing 'light'. She verbally says "muh muh muh" when she signs more, sort of like the word more without the r sound in it. She says "Duh" for dog. She squeals "DADA!!!" really loud when she wants my husband's attention. Her other obsession is our blue indiglo alarm clock...she smiles and gets excited whenever she sees it. Now she says "ock! ock! ock!" when she sees the clock and points at it. I wish I knew the sign for clock so I could teach it to her.

Cassie was at my parent's house for Labor Day and Sasha missed her. How I know? Well Sasha pointed at the computer chair where Cassie is normally sitting, yelled "EH!" (her name for her sister) and signed "sister" which is what we taught her to sign for Cassie. She kept pointing staring at Cassie's chair looking for her.
Sasha has a little dog stuffed animal, and when I play with her sometimes I pretend it's a real dog. I make it bark at her and lick her and jump around. Now she likes to grab the dog and bark and make it jump around too. It's very cute.

Basically, it just seems like something clicked in her mind and the language light switch just turned on. Watching a child grow from a helpless little infant into a real person is just incredible and it was weekends like this that amaze me.

Standing game captured on film

I finally got some pictures of Sasha doing that little standing game she's been doing lately. I went back to one of the older posts here about the standing game she likes to play and attached a pic to that too.
Notice the little tongue hanging sticking out of Sasha's mouth in the picture above? For some strange reason, Sasha has been doing that a lot lately. No idea why. She used to do that for a day or so whenever she got a new tooth and was getting used to it being in her mouth. But I double checked and no new teeth or anything. She just likes to stick her tongue out a lot I guess. It looks cute to me, like she's really thinking deeply.
She's got some heavy motivation in this pic...daddy's glasses. She loves to rip the glasses off his face and play with them.

I forgot to mention the other day that Sasha said a new word the other day: light. She has a thing for lights, led's, blinky things, or anything that illuminates. She was sitting in my lap pointing at the lights in the living room. I said "light" to her a few times and clear as a bell she pointed to the lights and said "light".
She's also been signing more and eat a lot more lately. Tonight, she saw my husband drinking a pepsi. She was staring at it and started signing "eat". She wanted a sip. I think it was pretty cool that she was able to actually request what she wanted by using sign language.

Signed POTTY!

Today when Sasha (10 months old) woke up, she seemed really crabby. She was crying and seemed to be making a strange gesture with her hand, sort of like waving but more deliberate. I figured she was hungry so I started to feed her. Halfway through the feeding she stopped eating and started crying. She did the strange hand gesture again. Then she started grunting, turning red and started pooping. I said to her "Oooh Sasha are you going potty?" and she started making the gesture again very deliberately at me. Then it hit me. She was signing POTTY! (sign looks like you're shaking your hand with it positioned in the 'letter t' position, see link for sign video). Holy cow! I totally didn't expect her to ever sign that to me until she was like 2 or 3 years old. She didn't put her hand in the letter T position but it was definitely her version of potty.

I read a baby sign language book by Dr. Garcia and it suggested to do the potty sign with your baby even though you don't expect them to understand for a while because it would help with potty training later. So whenever I saw her grunting or obviously going potty I would sign potty at her. Also whenever I went potty, I usually have to take her into the bathroom with me and sit her down on the floor next to me. I know, no privacy for me but it's the only way I can go and still keep an eye on her. I always sign POTTY to her whenever I am going too. So she's seen the sign. I just didn't realize that she actually understood what it meant.

So this evening after she signed to me, I took her out to dh and told him what happened. I asked her to show her daddy how to sign POTTY and she did it for him. So she definitely meant to sign potty! Yay!

This makes me happy as I haven't seen a sign out of her in at least a month, and I've been very good about signing to her :)

That's a 'More'!

I'm going to call it today. Sasha is officially signing the word "More". She signs it when I ask her to and she mostly signs it when I'm tickling her or making her laugh and she wants me to do whatever it was that amused her again. It's so cute, it looks like she's clapping except with little fists when she does it.
I suspected she was signing "more" for the past few days but I wasn't sure if it was my imagination, just coincidence, or if maybe I was reading too much into her little clapping movement. But I think she's really doing it!

We're still reeling from Sasha's sleep schedule. I hope she has mercy on us soon.

The other night, we all decided to make a night run to IHOP. We took the bumbo seat along for Sasha to sit in on the table. She is so well behaved when she sits in that seat at the dinner table. Anyways I had a glass of water with a straw and Sasha learned how to drink from a straw.

And in other news, we were pleasantly surprised to see a sign of intelligence in that little baby brain. There is this attachment on her pack-n-play that plays music, sound effects, vibrates, and has a light. Each function has its own button. It's become her after-diaper routine to play with the buttons but she can't quite push the buttons with enough force to make them do what they're supposed to. So now she grabs one of her Dad's fingers, directs it to a button, pushes his finger to make it push the button with enough accuracy that she can switch the music, sound effects and lights. And she looks to make sure it does what it was supposed to. Like, she understands what each button is. When she pushes the button to turn on the different lights, she cranes her head to look at the specific light to make sure it goes on or off. Neat!

More?

I think Sasha may have signed to me today. There's this strange game that I play with her, only because she really seems to like it. I put her on the floor flat on her back and stand over her. Then I balance myself on one foot and put my other foot on her belly like I'm stepping on her and I say "I'm stepping on you!". For some reason she finds this absolutely hilarious. Well, today she gave me the expression she gives me when she wants me to do something again. When she did that I signed "more" to her then I stepped on her again. Repeat that last sentence about 20-30 more times and she finally started hitting the tips of her fingers together in what looked like the sign language for "more" while she gave me her "do that again!" look. I think she's starting to get it.
I tried to get my husband to look, but by the time he looked she stopped doing it. I sort of wanted his confirmation of whether he thought she was signing. It could have been coincidence. Therefore I suppose I'm not counting it as an official sign yet. If I can see her do it more often where I'm not wondering if it's my imagination then I'll start believing she's signing.
Good, because her Signing Time video is starting to drive our household a little crazy. My husband mentioned that he had some hardcore World War II dream...tanks and machine guns and explosions and the whole works, with the Signing Time lady standing in the middle of battle singing her Signing Time song. Yikes! Perhaps he's seen that video a few times too many. But Sasha is starting to get upset when she doesn't see that darned video on the television. Apparently she's also okay with Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN. But AC360 had a guest host on tonight. Give us a few more days. We'll be absolutely insane if we have to watch these videos much more.

Oh yeah, she's sitting up! She really started sitting up without us having to hold her this past weekend. Before that, she would fall over after only a few seconds. Now she can sit up for over a minute or two, sometimes longer! Unless she is startled then she falls over backwards.

What's Wrong with Rachel?

"The 'Baby Signing Time' lady is starting to creep me out", my husband says to me, (referring to the woman on Sasha's 'Baby Signing Time' DVD). Sasha seems to like her, but I have to admit there's something I can't put my finger on that bothers me too. Maybe she's just too darn cheerful? My husband said he thinks it has something to do with her eyebrows. "I've never seen it, but I'm pretty sure she's what someone would look like if they combined Ecstacy/Zoloft/Cocaine", he says. Whatever it is, we can't watch too much of it at once. I do appreciate the educational benefits of the baby sign language video and I think it's otherwise a great video.

New Toys!

Yesterday, we decided that Sasha needed some 'interactive' toys, rather than just 'passive' toys. I suppose I could explain what I mean. Most of Sasha's toys, up until this point, are objects that don't really do anything. You know, dolls, stuffed animals, etc. They're curious and up until now they worked well for teaching our little dear how to reach for and grasp objects. But lately, Sasha's favorite toys haven't been toys at all. Like the remote control for the tv, our computer keyboards, cell phones. Stuff with BUTTONS! Stuff that does stuff. Cause and effect and all that good stuff.
So we took our little cutie to the local Babies R Us store to let her pick out some toys that would catch her interest. We tested lots of different toys out and got whatever she seemed to show interest in. Here's what she got:
A Fisher Price Laugh N Learn: Home Phone
Some Leapfrog Learn N Grove Maracas
some weird looking Baby Einstein Kaleidoskope
and a baby tap-a-tune piano
So yeah, all noisy toys. I don't mind really. Sasha seems to like them all and anything that makes her happy makes me happy (unless it's a bottle of bleach or something like that).
My husband had received some recommendations on Baby Einstein videos and got two of them. I really had my mind set against having my baby watch television, but I had already gotten two Baby Signing Time videos for her. I figured why not? Well, I guess Baby Einstein videos are like crack for babies. At least the few minutes I saw of the Baby Bach video before I left for work. It reminded me a lot of the iTunes visualizer that Sasha loves, except with real images.
Speaking of videos, I hadn't played the Baby Signing Time video for her in a few weeks, and really she's only seen it twice. I didn't expect a 6 month old to really get much out of a video, especially a sign language video. But I decided to play it for her today and I was impressed, mostly with my Sasha. When words that she was familiar with came up on the video, she went nuts! Especially words like Milk, Water, and All Done. She really seemed to recognize those words. When Milk was said and signed (which I do a lot for her when it's time to eat) she got very vocal and animated. I think she even expected to be fed.
Anyways, I hope she had a good day. I enjoyed the time I spent with her.