Words

Here I was trying to get a picture of Neil signing for raisins. None of knows the actual sign for raisins. I use the sign for cherry but not so consistently that it has caught on around here. On oatmeal mornings (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays) Neil sees Ruth Anne hold up her fingers when we ask how many raisins she wants. She also uses her fingers to say how old she is and how old she will be. This is probably partially a compensating mechanism across English and Russian. She can count in English up to eleven and she can count in Russian but skips 3 (raz, dva, chitiri). Anyway, Neil knows to hold up about five fingers for raisins or just to point and get excited.

I've been trying to keep track of his words. Like Ruth Anne his favorite word/sign is MORE. He uses this for anything he wants but usually what he wants is more. It is hard to communicate something new. He has WATER down pat and has used it in some creative ways, like to request milk for his cereal or tell me that something has spilled. He says UH-OH. He says DONE very clearly and usually signs just to reinforce this. Another extremely popular word is HOT. He's starting to learn COLD but this is less awe-inspiring really.

He really likes BOOK, a b sound and sign that looks like "change" but he doesn't request diaper changes. He signed POTTY the other day (waving a fist/"t"), trotted off, sat in his clothes, made a hissing sound with his mouth, continent but very proud).

Neil has a wide range of growls, perhaps for different animals but I cannot differentiate his jaguar from his dog for example. We finally heard from Neil pointing at a picture that he says RUTH ANNE, two syllables something like d-an.