Our Girl Is A Genius

I realize when Grace was born that there was probably some speculation in some circles as to whether my academic background might influence the way I parent. Would I only allow Grace to watch Baby Einstein and Sesame? Would I put a 3-month-old on a vigorous flashcard regimen? Would I insist she learn a foreign language before she was one? If anything, I feel like my background has influenced me to go in the other direction. Do we watch Baby Einstein and Sesame? Sure, Grace loves them. Do I expect her to start reciting her A,B,C's any day now? Absolutely not. I'm a big fan of letting kids explore and develop at their own pace. Of course we read to her and we work on farm noises and identifying her belly, nose, ears, etc. But this is done more for fun than anything. The other day we were watching Blue's Clues and she went up to the TV, waved to Steve, turned in a circle, and lifted up her shirt to show him her belly. She occasionally "moos" when we read "The Big Red Barn." All this is amusing, somewhat amazing, and good for a laugh.

The only topic that I wanted to explore that some might consider a "little out there" was baby sign language. Baby sign language is touted as being a great solution to your toddler's communication problems. They know what they want, they just can't articulate it. This makes perfect sense to me and after assurances from the pediatrician that it wouldn't impede her speech development, I embarked on a sign language campaign. Now I didn't have any expectation that Grace would speak in complete sentences. We just worked on key words like "more," "drink," and "hungry." The trick about sign language, though, is you usually need 2 hands to do it. Considering mothers have a shortage of hands, this makes signing with any regularity exceptionally hard. I tried this for months with no success and had basically given up until the other day.

Grace was enjoying her favorite snack of ritz crackers. Have you seen her eat a ritz? It's hilarious and a little scary. She shoves an entire cracker into her little mouth. Her eyes tear as she attempts to chew it all and my husband swears she breaks out in a sweat. She was down to her last cracker and she made the sign for "more." I was dumbfounded. I felt like the miracle worker and Grace my new prodigy. I practically trembled with excitement! My baby could "talk"! I quickly picked up the phone to call her dad to share the news. As I was dialing though, I heard a string of incredible babble coming from Grace. And I mean incredible. I turned around to see what was up. Grace was cradling a ritz cracker between her ear and shoulder as if she was talking on the phone. With the other hand she was gesticulating wildly. At first I thought, "Do I look like that when I'm on the phone?" Then, "Is that a ritz cracker in her ear?" In as much as it was a special moment for me, it also became a reminder of how much Grace actually does understand or at least tries to understand about her world. My moment of being extremely proud quickly shifted to silly laughing between the two of us. She knew using a ritz as a phone was silly but she wanted to convey to me that she too is big and can be just like mommy.