Babies can understand and communicate quite a bit when they are little; they just can't do it with spoken language. Rye's cousin Alana used sign language, taught by her parents, and it was impressive. The ASL helped her express her needs calmly, without pitching a fit. And, man, I can not bear whining, so hopefully this will help in the long run (especially since my approach with 4th-6th grade whiners—writing your multiplication tables two times—doesn't seem like it will be effective here for quite some while).
We're all working on learning signs. Rye seems to understand some, even though he can't produce them. He has been trying to make the signs for "milk,""more," "Nuk" and "change," as in change diaper. We're also working on "ride" (ride in the sling), "bath," "help (me)," and "finished." In the meantime, Rye is working on his Urdu. Or some other alien language that he's using to practice while we all catch up with him.
This morning, he did a good job understanding the question of whether he was ready to eat, and reproducing a fair approximation of the sign "milk." Video here. (Notice that his other hand is still, so in this case he wasn't just moving his hands around. I swear!)(My kid's a genius, I swear!) Most babies don't produce their first signs until about 6-8 months old, so it's nice that he's clueing in so early.
It's true that often you can get a positive response doing pretty much anything with your hands—Rye thinks all that motion is hilarious. So sometimes it's hard to tell what's a sign or understanding, and what's him just thinking you're a total card. We try to lean toward the positive, though.
Sorry, I tried to embed the video on the blog, but after four hours of upload time, I gave up. Youtube was easier, taking only about three minutes.
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