More baby signing goodness! After “all done” and “boob” Ingrid has more or less learned “sleep” and “drink” as well. Both quite useful signs.

The boob sign has turned out to be particularly interesting. The signing makes it very obvious how often she really thinks about boobs. I knew that she likes breastfeeding when she gets up (in the morning as well as after naps) and in the evening, and sometimes when she’s hungry, and sometimes when she’s upset. But she also signs “boob” at random intervals during the day. “Here’s a toy, hmm let’s see what I can do with that, oh look there’s mummy, BOOB!”

Ingrid has also started combining the sign with the word (in Estonian), pronouncing it clearly enough to leave no doubt that it’s a word and not just noise. This is her third more-or-less clear word which she uses on her own initiative. I’m not sure but I get the impression that the signing helped. Perhaps giving her a very simple and unique symbol for an important concept made it easier to learn the word as well?

All of her other words really sound the same… there’s “baba”, I think, for “daddy” (“pappa”) but also “bapa” for “navel” (“naba”) and “päppä” for “lamp” (“lampa”).

For some reason Ingrid has been fascinated by my navel. Most times when we sit down to breastfeed she starts by pointing at my navel and saying “bapa”. She has discovered that the navel looks similar to my nipples and to a birthmark, and tried using the “bapa” word for all of these – “little round thing on mummy’s skin”, perhaps?