November 18: Signing, pizza

Carter is starting to sign, finally. Right now he knows only one sign (the one for "milk"), and he uses it for everything. He sees Mommy walk through the door, home from work? *signs milk* The cat walks by and meows at him? *signs milk* His diaper is being changed? *signs milk* Actually wants to nurse? *signs milk*

At this point I am trying to reinforce that signing milk means he is telling me he wants to nurse, so I nurse him every time he signs it. I'm also showing him lot of other signs too, and I'm guessing he'll start to figure them out at some point. It's really cute to see him signing, though. It's exciting to think that he is already learning to communicate with us. :-)

We have a Baby Einstein signing video, and I decided to pull it out tonight to watch it with him. He was interested in the puppets, but not so much the rest of it. Still, it was interesting to see all the different signs. But the video itself was... well, it wasn't really us. When they showed the babies signing "milk", none of them were nursing; they were drinking from bottles. There were pictures of milk cartons and a cow, but Carter won't be drinking cow's milk for at least a year. The sign for "eat" was accompanied by images of babies being spoon-fed, and one puppet sequence showing a baby puppet refusing to open its mouth and having to be tricked into eating some baby food by a mother puppet doing the airplane thing. There were no images of babies feeding themselves with their fingers. The sign for "sleep" was accompanied by pictures of babies sleeping in cribs.

It was sort of weird to think that we're doing things so differently. I mean, I know that, but because so many people I know aren't following the beaten path either, it's easy to forget our approach to parenting isn't so mainstream. The other thing that bothered me about the video was that families were shown as only consisting of a baby, mother, and father. Lots of families don't necessarily look like that -- so what would it be like for them to watch a video that shows an "ideal" family that looks nothing like them?

On a different note, we went out to our local pizza joint for dinner tonight, and Carter munched on some pizza crusts. Blurry phone photo (it was dark):



He liked them okay, though he seemed far more interested in chewing on the plastic cup lid we gave him. Yesterday we went to an Italian restaurant for lunch, and he had bread, salad, and a bit of my eggplant parmesan! It's so much fun to give him new things to try, and so enjoyable that we can all sit together and enjoy a family meal. At least at the moment, we don't have to take turns eating while one of us entertains Carter, and we don't have to rush through our meal before he loses his patience. We can even linger at the table afterwards, while he entertains himself. I don't know how long this lovely phase will last, but for now going out to eat with him is great fun. :-)

Weight check before tonight's bath: 20.4 pounds.