Guest Post Day - BumblingAlong

Today is guest post day, this is the fantastic brainchild of Erica at Littlemummy.com. You will alot of bloggers have swapped blogs for the day, this is a great way to find new blogs.

I have the great fortune to be twined with BumblingAlong, I was lucky enough to have found her blog a while back but have been really slack at going over and having a read (sorry Bumbling) I will be making sure I pop over more often.

Without further ado here is her excellent post.....

Hi, all NewMummy readers! I’m Bumbling, and over at BumblingAlong, I blog about Moo, my little one, who is also 15 months old.  I’m a new blogger, and so I was very pleased to have the opportunity to swap posts with the lovely Carol, the gracious host of my guest post here. My blog is still pretty bare, but I’m working on it, and I’d love for you to come over and say hi.  In fact, NewMummy herself is helping to boost my post numbers with a post about how her little one is learning to talk - please go along and have a read.

Whilst Moo is keen to make a lot of noise, I’m not sure that I could class it as talking. I'm never sure whether other people would recognise her noises as being the words I believe them to be. She clearly says “hiya”, “yeah” and “no”, but other words, yeah, that might just be wishful thinking on my part!

That being said, the fabulous Josie over at Sleep is for the Weak I'm sure recognised Moo's "quack quack" when we saw some ducks during a walk in the park. But if I hadn't been sure what she meant, I could just have looked at her hands.  Whilst saying "quack quack", she was also opening and closing her hand in a manner very similar to a duck's beak opening and closing.

That's right - we use baby signing!

Not as consistently as we should to make it really useful, but slowly and surely, Moo has been learning the signs to go with her sounds, and at 15 months, it is starting to make a real difference in our communication

We haven't been to any classes, just used information available online. We haven't been as consistent as recommended, but signing has definitely helped Moo let me know what she wants, although the point and grunt/"dat" remains an effective form of communication!

"Duck" has always been one of our most used signs, probably because the first song and sign that really caught Moo's fancy was "5 little ducks", and she loves playing on Peekaboo Barn on my iPhone...  But "milk" was the first sign we tried to learn.  The version we learnt was holding your fist vertically, with your thumb pointing up, open and close the fist - a simplified sign for milking a cow!

Moo uses this sign a lot, and it is signed vehemently every morning when she gets up, and also when she gets out of her bath in the evening.  And then it very definitely means milk.  But unfortunately she also uses it a lot during the day, and she hasn't had daytime milk for ages! So is she really asking for milk? Or is she looking for food or water, or something else entirely?  It's hard to know, but at least we're making a start.

So we have "duck" and "milk".  What else?  She knows and uses "bath" - not just for when she is having one, but also when she needs her nappy changed! We have inconsistent use of her version of the sign for "more" (index fingers tapped together), although she's more likely to point and shout "agg" (again!).

But the one that got me was her very appropriate use of the sign for "bed" on Wednesday night. We'd had a fractious evening. Daddy had come home from work, given Moo her bath and then rushed out to a chess match. Moo and I were sitting brushing her teeth in the living room, a good half an hour or more before her usual bedtime. And she pointed to the door.

I thought she wanted something from the table, so offered her everything appropriate, only to be greeted by a strong shake of the head. She sat on my knee, looked me in the eye, put her hand up to her cheek and tilted her head. A simplified version of the sign for bed.  She was tired. Bed it was.

And she fell fast asleep.

(And as I was on my own, I got straight on the phone to Nanny and straight on Twitter to announce my amazement!)

Baby signing rocks!

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Thank you so much for that amazing post Bumbling, I have two books on singing and still haven't done it with her yet, I think its time to give it a go its clearly working really well for you!

Don't forget to check out my guest post over at BumblingAlong  and if you want to see who else have swapped blogs for the day, pop over to Littlemummy.com and see the guest post draw.

NM X