Biking without Dada

Today Belle and I went out for another long-ish bike ride. We rode a little over 6.5 miles (thanks Gmaps-Pedometer and Ben for introducing me to it) to get my sister's birthday card in the mail today in hopes that it'll get there tomorrow (I know... fat chance but it has a better chance of getting there than if I mailed it tomorrow). :) It was another nice, leisurely ride on another beautiful Florida afternoon!

Early in the bike ride, Belle was making me sad 'cause on our last bike ride I kept telling her to look for Dada since he was riding with us, so for the first few minutes of our ride today she kept yelling "Dada" and looking around to find him. I had to keep telling her "Dada went bye-bye". :( After I got over being sad (and she finally stopped yelling for Dada), I realized how smart she was to remember that the last time we biked she played by looking for Dada. That reminded me of the blog entry of Angelle's from last summer where she mentioned that Leah asks about her Dada anytime she sat on the porch with her mom because she remembered sitting there with her dad before. I remember reading it then and thinking, "WOW she's such a big girl", and it freaks me out that now Annabelle is that "big girl" too!

I know I've mentioned that I love signing with Annabelle, but I seriously can't imagine how different things would be if I didn't. It is SO cool the things that we are able to talk about because she can either sign it or is able to say so many things (because of learning to communicate early through signs, I'm sure!). During our bike ride we went past lots of run-off ditch drain thingys. There were lots of turtles in them and ducks too. I stopped a couple of times to point out the animals to Annabelle. But one time she saw the ducks before I did and kept saying "Daadaa" (which means "quack quack" and sounds different enough from "Dada" that I know she's talking about a duck and not her dad. she says that a lot instead of saying "duck") and I asked her where they were and she signed "water"! I firmly believe that without signing she would not have been able to tell me that! Belle's up to 32 spoken words and 27 signs now, with hardly any overlap between the two. That means she's able to communicate about 50 words to me! I think that's AMAZING for a 13 month old! I used the book Signing Smart to learn how to teach signing to Belle and it was a great guide. I use a couple of ASL (American Sign Language) websites to find new signs when I find that Annabelle is interested in something or there's a word that we use often that she isn't able to repeat verbally. It's crazy that I don't think she's getting something one day, but then the next day she's saying or signing it to me and I have to figure out what she's saying! It's just like when a baby speaks and says something like "ba" for bottle and you know that they are saying something and what it means... she signs something and it may be close to but not quite the correct sign so you just have to figure out that it means that word to them. And just like a baby may say "ba" for both bottle and blankie, they may use the same sign for different words and you just have to know what it means by the context. Critics of signing with babies have said that it slows verbal development, but the research (and Annabelle) says that isn't true at all and, in fact, the opposite is true. This is because the baby realizes that he/she is able to clearly communicate with you earlier, so in addition to the communication that you get through signs, they will try to say words because they know that you are able to communicate with them that way. Because their verbal skills aren't quite ready, they aren't necessarily able to say everything or say all words perfectly yet, but they can still communicate with you. It's SO amazing, and I hope that I don't forget how great signing is by the time Baby Donald 2.0 is ready to start communicating with me.