Friday, February 09, 2007

Play dates, teeth, and baby signing

We had a playdate yesterday. It was good but A was not in good form. None of us had gotten enough sleep and his teeth were really taking up most of his attention. I don't think he's in great pain, since Tylenol seems to have no effect on his cheerfulness. I can only imagine that he is just preoccupied the way anyone is when they've got something bugging them. I have a partial temporary crown right now that's already popped off once (damn you, almond croissant) and I know my mouth is sore from constantly probing the strange thing in my mouth with my tongue.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to future playdates. It's interesting to see how different babies are at this age. We met with L, who is a month older than A, and Miss M, who is three weeks older than A. They don't play together - other babies are more like other toys than other people. L is a friendly little guy who's already crawling, immediately crawled over me then scaled the vastness of my bosom to stand up. We've seen M off and on; she's happy to scoot around from toy to toy to see what it does. A gets frustrated and complains when he can't go to where he wants to go; he needs an occasional "You're fine, go ahead," from me and then he's smiling again.

I'm trying to decide if we're going to do baby signing or not, since we should start now. It seems like a load of trendy hooey, but my sister had deaf kids in her classes as a baby. She learned some basic ASL (eat, drink, hungry, please, potty) and I know she used it before she could speak. It's supposed to cut down on communication frustration and help explain concepts (the sign for more shows the concept of more, maybe). I just don't know how trendy a mom I want to be.

Oh, and I got Bread and Cie this morning and I got to sleep in, woo hoo. Plus I have a palmier for later today. Sigh.

1 comment:

sasha said...

*UNSOLICITED ADVICE ALERT*

Don't let the trendiness put you off of baby signing! Little Sam was a super late talker, and although we didn't sign with him as much as we could have, learning a few signs did cut down on his frustration considerably. Now that the boys are 5 and 2 1/2, we're all learning ASL as a second language...they love it! My goal is to teach them as much ASL and Spanish as I can; I think teaching second and third languages to kids when they're nice and spongy is one of the best gifts a parent can give.

*END UNSOLICITED ADVICE*