Finger Spelling: M - A -M - A

Ellie never stops surprising me. This morning is one of those times where she just makes me so happy I tear up. She has had a few rough days. We are in food trials again and the lamb one is not going to well. More on that for another post. Needless to say, she has an upset stomach and has been feeling poorly. Last night Dave was in and out of her room to comfort her. (I got to sleep having done it the last time).

Recently Ellie had figured out how to make the letter S with her left hand. We were sitting on the couch and she was obsessed with one of the Maisy (Lucy Cousins) books and she put her thumb on the letter S and then made the sign for S. Of course I was thrilled and heaped on the praise and excitement.

The ASL letter S is a closed fist with your thumb crossing the other fingers. And she figured out how to do this on her own. So I realized when she showed me this last week that maybe she would be able to do the other closed hand letters - like A and then T, M, and N. So I showed her those. She was so interested she even let me help her make the hand positions. Since then she has been practicing making A, T, M, N and S and we added B too. The first time she tried to make the B (which is an open hand with the thumb crossing the palm) she could not get her hand open so she used her other hand to pull her fingers up. Does that just want to make you cry!? I did. She tries so hard and is so tenacious.

So add B to the finger spelled letters she can do. Every night when we sit on the couch she wants to show the brunette princess on her princess blanket these signs. I hold up the blanket so she can see the princess's face and she makes the signs and the princess is always really impressed. (This is our way of dong imaginary play - lots more to describe here about how we got there - but in another post).

Anyway - so it's been an amazing thing with her initiating all this finger spelling.

This morning after the rough night I hear Dave and Ellie on the monitor. Ellie wants to sit up and Dave puts her on his lap and Ellie starts finger spelling. I hear Dave vocalizing the letters she is making as she does it. I don't know why we do that - we just do - we lend her our voices to reiterate that we understand what she is doing, reading, now finger spelling. And I hear Dave say, "M - A - M - A. You spelled Mama!!! Mama is going to be so happy! You're my little genius!"

Yep, he called it right. Mama is very happy. When I picked her up this morning, she finger spelled M-A-M-A first thing. Sigh. I can always count on Ellie to burst my heart open in the space of seconds.