Nouns and Sounds

Nate is really exploding in the world of communication. He can now point out his eyes (and say eyesssss) ears, nose, and mouth — the latter isn’t so much of a point as it is a waggle-his-tongue-atcha then laugh mischieviously. He gets upset if you ask him where his belly is when he is wearing a snap-bottomed shirt since he can’t lift it to show off that belly button.

He has also within the past two weeks started picking up animal names and sounds. His first animal, but of course, was dog. He says “dog” and does the sign as well — patting his thigh with one hand. Or maybe it was duck? He started saying both at around the same time (and they sound the same in Natespeak at this point, but somehow I can tell the difference). About two weeks ago he picked up on cows saying moo. He doesn’t quite get the M enunciated correctly, and it sounds more like a true cow’s bray.

Tonight he expanded his animal repertoire to include the roar of a lion and the trumpet of an elephant (complete with arm swinging trunk like by his face, just as mommy demo’ed ). He can’t say the words yet, but if I ask him to point out the elephant, or lion, or cat or fishie in the Big Book of animals, he can. Oh, and he does the sign for fish too, when we are on that page. He also does his version of the sign for bird — not entirely accurate, but I know what he means.

In the car on the way home tonight, Alex mentioned with excitement that he is scheduled for a field trip to Chuck E Cheeses tomorrow, and Nate excitedly and frantically started doing the sign for cheese at the thought of a cheese stick snack before dinner. Which he recieved after adding the sign for please.

His sign vocabulary is easily more than double what Alex’s was at this age — mostly because we have more signs with the help of the Signing Time! videos, as well as an older brother to reinforce what he has learned. A nonexhaustive list of his signs right now includes:

more
please
thank you
eat
cracker (he is partial to Honey Maid Graham Cracker Sticks)
cheese (Polly-O String cheese twists, to be exact)
apple (red delicious)
banana
dog
cat
fish
bird
train (though he does it on his arm rather than his fingers I know what he means)
ball (again, not 100% technically correct, but I know what he means and keep modeling it he right way)
car
plane (hard to get that finger formation, but he tries)
I love you (same difficult finger formation, same adorable attempts)
Mama (though he almost as often calls me dada!)
Daddy (never seems to call Mike Mama!)
Alex (as modeled in the video — one of the two stars is named Alex, so that makes it easy!)
Grandma/Nani
Grandpa/PopPop
Play
Bath
Book (as in read to me, Mommy!)
Bye & Hi (which he says as well)

I will go back and add more as I remember them!