What Rilla’s saying at the end there is “With Alex, Leah, and Hopkins.” Totally unprompted, I swear.
When I watched our Christmas 2005 video
the other day, the bit that gave me the biggest pang of nostalgia was
watching Wonderboy signing away. He hardly signs at all anymore, now
that he talks so much. I’m thrilled with his verbal speech, but I
really miss the signing. It’s funny to think back on how much ASL dominated our lives
(in a rich and satisfying way) for a couple of years there, and now our
use and pursuit of sign language has slipped to the back burner,
becoming something of a hobby rather than a daily necessity. Jane still
wants to certify as an ASL interpreter someday, and every few months we
pull out our materials and learn another chunk of vocabulary and
grammar. There are community college courses we might take next year.
It’s a beautiful and important language, and I don’t want to let it go,
even if our boy doesn’t need rely on it for communication the way he
once did.
And of course the Signing Time
DVDs remain in great demand with my little people, as the video above
attests. With Rilla, we’re seeing all the benefits of sign language we
saw with the first three girls—because rudimentary ASL was a part of
our baby & toddler life from the get-go, long before we had a
Wonderboy or knew he had hearing loss.
Here are some old posts singing the praises of our favorite kiddie DVDs: