the 7th sign

While Benjamin's favorite and most frequently used sign is still "music," he has added a new sign to his ASL vocabulary:

brush
Every night, after his bath, I brush Benjamin's hair. A couple weeks ago, he started taking the brush away from me and trying to brush his own hair. Then last week he started to empty-handedly mimic the brushing of his hair after we were done.

Last night, when I was inviting him to turn out his closet light during our bedtime ritual, he pointed to the brush on his bureau and then mimicked the brushing of his hair. He's done it a few times since then.

In Sign with your Baby, the author says that babies will start to make up their own signs for things, and that the parents should just go with it.

So we're pretty excited that at 11 months old (which he is today), Benjamin has begun to make up his own signs to communicate with us.

Even cooler is the fact that his made-up sign for brush is in fact the actual ASL sign for brush!

- papa