Interpreting Baby Sign

We've all seen parents who seem (or pretend) to understand their toddlers random noises as some form of coherent speech. As an outsider, it makes you feel slightly inferior because when the child directs their babble at you and you don't respond, they usually get a frustrated (or patronising) look and it doesn't lead to anything good. This is especially true when it happens with a child whose old enough to be actually producing speech, albeit not inteligent to the uninitiated.

Being now on the parent side of the equation, I've discovered that interpreting baby speech can be lots of fun. Magda's spoken vocabulary is still fairly limited: mama, tata, buh (book), beh (bird), ah (give me more food right now and ignore the fact that my mouth is still full) and the occasional dog bark. But Jennifer has her going on Baby Sign and she's mastered all the words in the couple of books we have and uses them fairly consistently.

This is where the fun part interpretation comes in. Last night, Magda was feeding herself vegies at the dinner table when she took a break for "pushing". That's when she quiets down, stares in fixed concentration straight ahead while her face starts turning red and contorting with effort. Sometimes this may include a quiet grunt or two, or a tear of effort may squeeze out of her eye (I think she may need more fiber in her diet). Anyway, in the middle of all this, she started doing the sign for "baby".

My first and immediate interpretation was that my briliant daughter is complaining about the effort it takes to push that turd out and is equating it with giving birth to a baby. We haven't had the birds-and-bees talk, but it is conceivable that she could have learning this from TV, right?

My second interpretation was that she was refering to the picture of the baby on the box of wipies sitting on the wine rack next to the table (BTW, there is no reason for us to have an unopened box of wipies sitting on the wine rack in the dining room) -- telling us that it's going to take a lot of those after she's done with her busines.

Obviously, someone who doesn't interact with Magda on a daily basis would not be able to understand her expressive conversation(s). But we, the parents, do. Yes indeed!

Later, when she thought that I had forgotten about Magda's efforts over dinner, Jfer sweetly suggested that I change our doughter and get her ready for bed. Turns out Magda's diaper was just wet and her efforts had been for naught. And maybe she was just making the baby sign because that's what she likes to do. But you would never know, since you don't speak baby talk.