Here's Your Sign

When you first enter the club of motherhood, there is no end to the advice (both warranted and unwarranted) that you will receive. Some of it is helpful; others, not so much ("my mom always rubbed whiskey on my gums when I was teething" -- great advice... but what are the chances of Jer or I EVER having whiskey in the house?? and is it really an approved treatment anymore??). 

But there are two pieces of advice that have stuck out in my mind that I am really glad I heard about when Jubilee was on her way.  One: The BabyWise Scheduling Strategy!  If you have not read this book or at least know what it's about, I recommend it!  Get the eating schedule into a decent routine and the sleeping schedule will follow suit (a *very* brief description of the underlying idea).  Jubilee was eating on a set schedule at just a few weeks of age and was sleeping through the night before she was 7 weeks old!  But that's not what this post is about.

The second piece of advice that I received that I'm so glad I got was "learn to sign with your baby!"  Jubilee, Daddy, and I have been using sign language since she was a handful of weeks old.  Now she's 10 months old, and while she's not signing back yet, I *know* she understands a lot of what is being said/signed! We started out with just a couple basics at first --- milk, eat, and more.  After a few months of these, I started throwing in a few more signs here and there. 

Here's a quick list of words that I use regularly while we're playing, eating, or spending time together during the day:

MILK
EAT
MORE
ALL DONE
CRACKER
PLAY
BALL
BATH
HELP
LIGHT
PUPPY
BALL
GIRAFFE
MONKEY
MOMMY
DADDY
DIRTY
HOT

I can't wait to see which sign it is that she decides to start signing back with first :) I'm even more excited about that than the "race" to see whether we get a "Mama" or a "Dada" first (mostly since Dada already technically won that one -- it just seems to have disappeared or morphed back into "Baba")

Did/do you sign with your babies?  What was their first "words"?  How old were they when they started "talking" to you??