Claire's World

Claire's World

( 11:13 AM ) Greg Griffith
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New words in the last 24 hours:

rice
house

I'm including more signs now that I've found this great American Sign Language online dictionary. Claire doesn't necessarily know them all, but this is a great place to join the words she knows with the signs for them. #

( 10:48 AM ) Greg Griffith
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Here are some links to the signs that Claire uses the most. Grandparents and other potential sitters are encouraged to check them out.

You'll need QuickTime to view them, so if you don't see anything, head over here to get QuickTime.

bath (She knows this sign very well, and makes it when we ask her after dinner "What time is it?" Often she'll use only one hand.)

bird (She knows this sign well, and does it in response to seeing birds outside, on TV, or in pictures. She does the "chirping" motion toward her mouth instead of away from it, but it's still very clear what she means.)

flower (This one's a little hard to distinguish from "food," but just watch carefully if you're looking at flowers.)

milk (This is also a sign she knows very well. Often she'll use both hands.)

more (This is also a sign she knows very well, and one she uses a lot. We use an open left hand, which is different from what's shown here.)

rain (we wiggle our fingers to simulate raindrops)
#

( 10:37 AM ) Greg Griffith
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The words are coming fast and furious, and it's hard to keep up with them here on the blog, but here's the latest list of new words:

Says:

arm
two
bear
bible (she says this clear as a bell, whenever she sees her kiddy bible)
horsey (hossy)
door
up
ball
noodle
tail
passy (pacifier)
basket
toast
push
diaper (bi-per)
elbow
apple
#

( 12:17 PM ) Greg Griffith
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It occurred to me that maybe not everyone is familiar with what we're talking about when we describe Claire's signing. No, she's not deaf. Stacey somewhere saw this system for using sign language with babies. We've been working on it since she was about 4 months old, and she's been signing since about 7 months. I see that they're offering $50 for photos and videos of babies signing... Hey! Double-wide, here we come!

#

( 11:05 PM ) Greg Griffith
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It took a few weeks of teaching Claire where her eyes, nose, and mouth were before she was able to consistently point to them in response to our questions (she pokes our eyes, pokes our nose, and grabs our lips). But last night, for the first time, I showed her where her chin was, repeating myself about 4 or 5 times. Tonight, after eyes-nose-mouth, we asked here where Daddy's chin was, and she pointed right to it.
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( 5:15 PM ) Greg Griffith
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Today after lunch I met SDG and Claire at Laurel Park, where Claire showed off her newest word: "down." She held up her arms for me to lift her onto the rocking frog, and after a couple of minutes looked up at me, smiled, and said "down." Stacey says she used it earlier to indicate the same thing.

This is the first day since April that it's been cool enough to go outside - Claire played hard and came home with shoes full of sand. #

( 11:06 PM ) Greg Griffith
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SDG, Claire and I just got back from four days at Timberlake, where I finished "Undaunted Courage," sat on the screened porch while it rained all day Tuesday, prepared at least three fabulous meals (ask Lindy about the ribs) including trout fried in the hanging iron kettle over an open fire; cajun ribeye with sweet-potato andouille hash; and the aforementioned ribs. Email me if you want the recipes but didn't get them... the ribeye recipe is a thing of sublime beauty.

Anyway, it looks like Claire picked up 2 new words: "glasses" and "cloth." She has a cool pair of pink shades that she's recently started wearing (at first, she yanked them off her head as soon as we put them on). We forgot to take them to Timberlake, but a couple of times she grabbed my shades or Stacey's and ran across with the room with them, saying "gasses!"

Tonight when we got back and gave her a bath, she grabbed the wash cloth from Stacey, dunked it in her bath water and said, as near as I can type it, "koth."

Today as we were getting read to go, Claire, Mamaw, Papaw and I were playing with her on the porch, blowing gigantic bubbles with the Mr. Bubble contraption. I stopped, and she immediately signed for "more." Later, long after we were through with bubbles, she made the "more" sign again. I said, "More what?" and she immediately responded with the "milk" sign. #

( 12:06 AM ) Greg Griffith
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Claire is conked out after an exciting weekend. Saturday night she played hard at the pre-Goat Roast party, running around the hollow and playing with the other kids. One of the guys blew up a surgical glove into a balloon about the size of a beach ball and gave it to her, and she was beside herself, running around and batting it up in the air. No, we never give her any toys to play with. Neurosmith and Dr. Seuss and everything Elmo... but she loves more than anything a set of plastic nesting cups Kilby gave her, yesterday's Wall Street Journal, and things like inflated surgical gloves.

JB, Theresa, Michelle, Stacey's friend and maid of honor Mimi, her husband Jerry and their boys were there. The giant cookers, smokers and grills for Goat Roast had been fired up and put to work cooking 400 pounds of pork (shoulders and whole hogs) and 20 goats. One of the grills was then cleared off for everybody to throw on whatever they brought. We grilled the best salmon we've had in months, and drank wine and had a fine old time with about 50 or 60 other Philippians and friends.

Today was the 21st Annual Bluegrass Mass and Goat Roast. Claire was very well-behaved during the extra-long mass (about 90 minutes), keeping quiet the whole time but during the homily insisting on playing a 15-minute game of take-the-songbook-out-of-the-pew-rack, put-the-songbook-back-in-the-pew-rack. Afterwards, she wanted to run around while we ate, but somehow we corralled her, got her to eat something, and later went and got a balloon animal. Claire got the bear-holding-the-heart, and gnawed on it for half an hour. We were relieved at her insouciance when it finally popped.

The Vernon Brothers were in fine form, and played for about an hour and a half. The weather was cloudy, breezy, and in the high 60's - in other words, almost perfect.

#

( 11:19 AM ) Greg Griffith
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Claire now consistently points to eyes, ears, and nose when you ask her where they are. She's also started running over, grabbing my foot, and squealing "Toes!" #

( 10:21 AM ) Greg Griffith
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In the past 20 minutes, Claire has:

- put a baseball cap on her head, run into the room and said "Hat!"

- pointed to the bed and said "Bed"

- brought mama's sandals in and said "shoes!" #

( 10:22 AM ) Greg Griffith
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Night before last, right after dinner, we asked Claire what time it was. For the first time she made the "bath" sign in response. This is the first time she's volunteered this sign without hearing the word. #

( 6:23 PM ) Greg Griffith
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Claire just came running into the sun room from the back door and said what we could have sworn was, "Kitty-cat! Knocking!" Surely she wasn't really saying that the kitty-cat was knocking on the back door...

...but what should we find at the back door, but our kitty-cat, clearly visible through the full-length plexiglass, scratching to come in. #

( 4:42 PM ) Greg Griffith
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Vocabulary at 13 months

A few days after Claire's first birthday party we sat down to make a list of words she could say. We were going to post it to the regular site, but we didn't get around to it for about a week. In the meantime, she started adding about a word every other day. By now, it's going to be impossible to list them all, but we need to start somewhere, so here goes:

Says:

mama
daddy
kitty
baby
turtle
cooking
cracker
elmo
pooh
bye-bye
uh-oh
eye

Says and signs:

more
rain
bird

Signs only:

milk
food
flower

Identifies on body:

eye
ear
nose
knee

Identifies in pictures and drawings:

cat
bird
mouse
balloon
milk

In the book "Happy Baby Colors" the last 2 pages consist of four squares colored red, blue, yellow, and green, and on the opposite side pictures of bananas, a tomato, a parrot, and a leaf. We'll point to a color and tell her what it is, then cover it up and point to the objects on the other page. When we ask "What's red", etc., she can point to the correct object about 80-90% of the time. #

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