Baby Sign Language!

Today we attended an introductory baby sign language class. It's American Sign Language and the instructor focused on signs that would be useful to babies, such as "milk", "more", "toilet", etc. The instructor's name was Bill and he did an awesome job. We actually learned about 50 signs in class but I imagine we'll only retain a handful once a couple days go by. To help me remember, here are some of the signs:
- I (point to yourself)
- you (point to somebody)
- want (both hands clenched and pull them by your side with arms bent about 90 degrees so that forearms are parallel with the ground)
- love (make two fists, cross your arms and rock like you are hugging somebody)
- hot (gesture toward mouth with hands and then fling hand outward like you just took something hot out of your mouth)
- eat (put all 5 fingers together like a bird's beak and point at your mouth)
- hungry (move hand from about the neck down to belly one time as if food is going down the stomach)
- mommy, daddy, boy, girl, grandma, grandpa (male gestures are at top of forehead and female gestures are near the chin)
- toilet (sign the letter "t" and twist it)
- poo (put your fists together one on top of the other with thumb of the bottom fist inside the top fist. Pull the bottom fist downward like poo is coming out)
- diarrhea (like poo but the second hand does a gesture
- water (sign a "w" with your hand and put it near your chin)
- thank you (like blowing kisses)
- you're welcome (spread all 5 fingers apart and put your thumb to the middle of your chest and flutter it slightly)
- green (sign a "g" and twist it)
- go (point forward while signing "g" with both hands)
- walk (put thumbs together at length and paddle with both hands)
- run (put thumbs together at length and make a walking motion with the 2nd and 3rd finger) (I'm not quite sure of this one)
- yes (make a fist and nod it up and down like you nod your head)
- no (sign "n" and then "o". Ends up looking like your index and middle finger are straight and then they connect with your thumb while the other two fingers remain clenched)

Skyla's getting bored and I'm home alone at the moment, so I have to stop this post!

Update

So...it looks like I've been neglecting my blog as always! Our baby Skyla is almost 8 months old. As I type this she is banging around in her ExerSaucer, which is pretty much a bouncy chair with toys surrounding her in a circle. In the picture you'll see that she's chewing on her elephant, which is a toy from her Activity Gym.

If you were wondering, we liked the name "Skylar" but didn't like the er sound, so we made her name Skyla, which I like because it feels athletic.

There's so much I could say about child rearing, but I don't have the time or energy to say everything, so here are a few highlights:


- She was colicky for the first few months, which posed quite a challenge. She would not fall asleep in our arms. Initially, she would only fall asleep on the boob.
- We have a Moby Wrap, which is kind of a do-it-yourself sling. During a baby wearing class, the instructor put Skyla in her sling and in only a few minutes, Skyla was asleep! So for months 2 and 3, we used our sling as a magic weapon to get Skyla to sleep. The trick was to first put her in her swaddle, then put her in the sling. After swaying around, she would generally fall asleep quickly.
- Just after 3 months old, Skyla refused to fall asleep in the sling. Although we weren't planning to have her cry it out at 3 months, we were forced. It took about 1 hour and 15 minutes for her to fall asleep on her own the first time, and the results were miraculous. All of sudden, she slept a lot longer, sometimes 7 or 9 hours per night.
- We exclusively breastfed Skyla through the first 6 months. We got lazy with the bottle, which kind of backfired because Skyla hates bottle feeding. As you can imagine, this puts a lot of stress on Pearlin whenever she goes out.
- Because we both work from home, we can afford to launder our own cloth diapers. We're using prefolds, which are extremely cheap and easy to wash. We discovered that whenever there's a stain, you just put the diaper in the sun and the sun bleaches away the color. It's actually quite amazing because I never knew that really stained diapers could so easily be restored to a white color just by putting them in the sun!
- Because we're using cloth diapers, Skyla hates soiling herself. As a result, we're doing the third world country thing of potty training her early. When she struggles a bit, we hold her over the toilet and voila, Skyla often pees or poops straight into the toilet! We also have a baby potty that we use on occasion. One of the nice benefits of doing this is that since most of the poo goes into the toilet, laundering her cloth diapers isn't that big of a deal.
- We also learned a long time ago that disposable diapers are best for night time use. With cloth diapers, Skyla is likely to soil herself, wake up and cry in the middle of the night. With disposables that keep her dry, she sleeps like an angel.
- Skyla doesn't crawl or walk yet, but she talks a lot. Most of the time, it is dadadadada, or just da, or sometimes dada. Lately, however, she's been making other types of sounds, sometimes with a "g" or "e" sound. No "mama" sounds yet!
- As you can imagine, we've taken tons of photos and videos. We also got Skyla her first passport. Her passport photo is funny because she has no idea what's going on in the photo. We couldn't get her to smile, but that's OK!

OK, enough with the baby update! As far as MathScore.com is concerned, things are moving forward. I now have a team of sales reps in different parts of the country, and some of them are quite active. My Philippines organization is on track to do a very commendable amount of volume. We're currently working on improving our assessment tools. It turns out that for larger school sales, assessment tools are an absolute requirement, so although we have an assessment product, improvements are needed and we're working hard to make it better. Among other things, we're adding tools to better portray student progress over time.