Gratitude Journal

1. Andy Williams

2. H1N1 vaccinations

3. babies who listen and toddlers who don’t always listen

4. daydreaming of meals to come

5. Eggnog

6. dancing with the baby to Christmas carols

7. watching the toddler dance her heart out to Andy William’s version of Jingle Bells

8. Christmas presents wrapped and under the tree

9. a toddler feeling well enough to protest loudly and often

10. a grinning Buddha of a baby

11. Summer’s help

12. a festive work lunch

13. a new knit wool stocking for the Quail

14. eating the chocolates in the Advent calendar

15. weisswurst with red peppers and sweet onions

16. Jodi Piccoult stories on cd

17. The Quail signing “more”

18. The Quail reaching out to take her bottle from me with a grasping single hand

19. cuddly middle-of-the-night breathing treatments with a most snuggly baby

20. stocking stuffers

21. sleeping in till 8am

We started signing to her at about 6 mos old and since we had started my older daughter with more during mealtime I just started that with TQ as well. It actually hadn’t occurred to me to do milk- maybe I should do milk or bottle next? I was just wondering about that. It’s really just the start of imitation skills- although if you look you might notice other “signs”. Like everytime TQ is on the ground or in a chair I ask if she wants “up-up” and she’ll lift her little arms up overhead so I make a big fuss over it- so now she’ll do that pretty consistently. And when I go to change her diaper when she sees the diaper her little legs will lift up. I need to work on the sign for diaper change- I keep forgetting to do that one. Those were the earliest types of “signs” and they just came from her- this is the first one that I taught her that she has responded too. I got more consistent about signing more during meals between bites when she started responding to peek-a-boo last month- we do a blanket on her head and as she starts to pull it off asking, “Where’s TQ?” and getting excited and once she got doing that with the blankie on her head I added in on my head and then started alternating. She also is getting speech therapy right now and her OT and her SLP have focused on mmmmmm and more. Our SLP said that while I am fixing her food to have her in the kitchen with me and just talk to her about it, intermittently signing “eat” and asking in an exaggerated voice, “You want to eat?” pairing it with the sign, then once we sit down to eat and I am giving her bites, pause a few seconds between bites and ask if she want’s more, do the sign and put her hands in the sign position then offer a bite. Then I make a big fuss when she does it. I make a big fuss when I put her hands in the position too and give the bite pretty quickly repeating “More, TQ want’s more cereal!” She’ll do it now when the meal starts and a few times into it- but she’ll tire of answering me eventually. Her sister gets excited since it was her first sign too and will do it as well. I’ll do a post and picture about it next week. Her version is really more of a morph between eat and more- it’s so cute!