my little sunshine, shines

in a nutshell here are all the things my little sunshine is doing these days...

maya has started to eat regular food! she looooovvvveesss pasta and cheese/soy cheese, a girl after my own heart! it's so cool to see her chewing now that she has molars. she loves crunchy stuff and bread like her dada. whenever i go to the grocery store i try and find things that maya will be able to try like mandarin oranges, refried beans, sunflower seed butter and green beans. i have noticed she doesn't like veggies as much, so i'm still giving her pureed veggies/baby food so she gets her greens. now i understand what my friends all say about having issues in getting their babes to eat veggies. hahaha, i'm so happy to be in this stage with her!

maya has continued to learn new words (signing) almost every week. she is still in love with signing time and i'm glad for that. new signs include: cheese (ha!), noodles/pasta, book, bread, nurse/dr, cold, yogurt, fruit, walk, dance, jump, class, library, game, juice, different, thank you, please, happy birthday, cake, home. she also know the colors of the rainbow song by heart, including all of the colors. she is starting to also use 2 and 3 words together now (ie: more bread please.)

on thursday we hosted our first official play date with a mom's group. we had about 6 mom/kids over. there was a lot of parallel play but also there was some effort on maya's part to interact more with the other kids. it was nice to see.

before dinner that night i noticed maya standing by her push toy. she has never stood next to that thing unless she was in therapy. i called to her to start walking and sure enough her little legs started to move. it was awesome to see my baby girl upright, standing and walking without anyone behind her to nudge her or hold her hands.

it has been a constant battle to get her to walk and i often feel like i'm the only one working on it. frustration has set in and in a way i don't think i've pushed her hard enough. the guilt has started to built up about that. but on thursday i felt a new sense of determination. i have decided to put that push toy right in the middle of her play area instead of hiding it in the corner. it is my goal to get her to use it every single day. even if just for a few seconds at a time.

maybe it was the play date and all those kids running around...whatever the case i'm so happy that she is "trying" again. i will keep trying also.

31 for 21, Day 12: haircut and dada

two things happened today worth noting. the first is that maya got a haircut today. on a whim i decided to take maya to get a trim because quite frankly i'm no hairdresser. my grandmother used to cut my brothers hair as well as my hair for years and years. i even have a photo of one of them getting a haircut when he was a little boy in my grandmothers kitchen. it's a classic photo with my grandmother wearing 50's looking glasses. as i do with many things i try to document these events, although since it was a spontaneous discussion i didn't have a proper camera. thank goodness phones have cameras!

i should preface the photos by saying that the last and only time we took maya to get her haircut, she totally freaked out. it really surprised us because we had never seen her react that way. the whole time she was crying and signing "all done". we were so sorry to put her through that, that i opted to cut her bangs since then. but her hair had become so out of control...it was time.

surprisingly she didn't do too bad, she did fuss and cry about 90% of the time though. the photos i took are not as cute as the photo of my brother and grandmother but at least it is documented.

the second thing noting today happened at dinnertime. as our little family had dinner together, maya suddenly broke out with her verbal "dada" word. she has been saying dada for a while now so that part didn't surprise me, it was the fact that as she said it, she was signing "dad". i didn't want to get too excited at first because i thought maybe this was just a coincidence, but when she did it two other times after we acknowledged her i was so happy. at that moment i realized she was connecting her voice, a word that she spoke, to a sign that she did. wow! it totally caught me off guard. that was a sweet moment in time. kudos maya!

31 for 21, Day 3: signing

today i wanted to take note at maya's communication accomplishments. i often forget how much she has learned these last 6 months. she started to sign, if i remember correctly, a little after her 1st birthday. ever since then she seems to have taken off like crazy. i have to thank her favorite show, baby signing time vol 1-4, and just recently she has graduated to signing time vol 4-6. she honestly learns so much when she watches them.

what i noticed is that she accumulated words in spurts. at first it was the basics, like milk, more and all done. those are still her favorite words. but then she started learning words i never could imagine, like music, time and me. she has recently fallen in love with the abc song and is trying to sign the letters. i think she has x and z down now. she also loves the rainbow song which i try, most often off key, to sing to her at least 5 times a day. this girl loves to sit in front of our dishwasher and sign to herself every day. sometimes if she is allowed into our bathroom she sits in front of the mirror and does the same. i don't always know what she is saying to herself, but it sure seems like a lovely conversation she is having.

below i wrote down all the words that she has in her vocabulary. i tried to add them in the order she learned them to see her progression. while she doesn't sign these words "perfectly" she signs them while we use flash cards, reading or spoken word.

milk
more
all done
eat
play
hungry
music
bubbles
ball
baby
signing
time
hat
stars
sky
shoes
socks
outside
day
rain
wind
sun
cold
dog
cow
bird
duck
cat
horse
tired
wash hands
bath
friends
potty
no
nice
water
cracker
banana
apple
sheep
car
dad
mom
flower
ice cream
bread
stand
dance
brush teeth
please
rainbow
colors
red
orange
blue
tree
bus
book
home
me

maya's first language

maya's first language is not english, hindi or spanish, it is sign language. this is no surprise since pretty much all maya says is da-da (on a good day). but what is so surprising is the rate at which maya is learning words.

the very first sign that maya did was "all done". i remember watching her very carefully for days just to make sure that she really was signing this word. it was around her first birthday when it seemed the light bulb went off in her head. i was so happy when i saw she was getting this one one word down and then one day out of the blue when i said milk, she started to sign milk. i was so impressed because it almost seemed that she picked it up on her own. i was spending so much time working on teaching her "more" that i didn't think she would skip that and move onto "milk".

everyday it seems that she surprises me with a new word. so far she has signed: all done, milk, more, ball, signing time, shoes, baby, wash hands and hungry. some of these words she just picked up on her own like wash hands. she loves to use this sign when she sees water (when i wash my hands or when we are getting her bath ready). other signs she has struggled with like "more". even though it's the sign i've tried to teach her the most she doesn't seem to initiate it very often.

now i have to say i don't feel guilty at all for letting her watch those baby signing time videos. i really think that she is catching on so quickly because of them. the nifty way they use sign language when they sing songs is what i think catches her eye and ears. she honestly pays attention to the videos and now i know she is learning from them.

sign language and maya

i've been trying to sign to maya every chance i get. at first it felt kind of funny, because well, it's not like she is looking at me all the time. but lately she is looking directly at me for longer periods of time so i show her the sign for milk, food and hungry mostly.

from the moment i knew i was going to have a baby i started to dream about teaching sign language to my child. i remember the first time i saw it in person, my cousin was signing with his son. it was so cute seeing his tiny hands speaking back to his dad. at that time i didn't quite understand how useful signing could be, but when i started to think about it, i knew it was a good thing.

and researchers say that signing with babies may boost their IQ.

i've always loved sign language and now i have the most perfect excuse to use it. here is where i have found my favorite signing dvds. it's a series called signing time, of all things. i love this series because the teachings aren't too distracting or over the top. the person who stars in it sings all the songs on the video. she herself signs and then they show a lot of little kids signing the best way they can. it's really sweet.

anyway, i thought i'd share this info because i know when i was looking for a signing series i was very confused as to which product to get. i was so lucky because a down syndrome group here gave us a copy of one of the signing times dvd. i was very impressed and of course i had to order the baby signing time set. the set included 2 cd's with all the little nifty songs that they have created to sign along with. i have to admit i have been singing and signing to them on my own. they are quite catchy songs.

i'm so looking forward to that first moment when maya will use a sign. like the first time i heard her laugh and the first time i heard her coo, i'm sure it will be a special day.