Waving Bye-Bye

Being nearly eighteen months old means that the baby is very nearly grown up (or so she claims), and that equates to doing many more things on her own. She wants to feed herself no matter how messy she gets, she wants to climb into the chair by herself no matter how many bumps this may entail, and she wants to make her own choices about all sorts of things. The problem is how to express yourself when your vocabulary is all of maybe twenty words. This is where you have to get creative.


Getting people to do what you want is always though. Often she uses the sign for "more" to mean "do this service for me." For instance, she uses that sign when she wants you to open the door, lift her up, open something, or even take her around the hippie fair so she can listen to more music. The problem comes from not knowing which service or item she wants at a given time. I spend a lot of time saying "do you want x?" then she will shake her head "do you want y?" and so on. At least she knows specific signs for books and hungry, so those most important topics are covered.

Then there's also the problem of saying when she doesn't like something. The "all done" sign works for some things, such as finishing food, but it doesn't really cover everything. After quite a bit of frustration she's settled on waving bye-bye when she wants something to be over. Thus she will listen to music in the car and then wave "bye-bye" when she wants me to change the song. It's quite the sign that she's never waved at Mr. Darby or Caspar Babypants. She waves at things that are scary or boring or just not her style. I'm guessing that as she gets older, the opinions will only get more strident.