One month old, week 4

Juli grew bigger and bigger. She stayed awake more often and longer. She became curious about the world and was ready to explore the world. She enjoyed little trips sightseeing around the house in tour arms. She laughed out. Time passed by faster.

Composing poetry

Music is Dude's passion and it's part of his life. On the other hand, I am not into music. This opposite, however, doesn't bring a gap to our life dynamics. Rather, baby and music were an opportunistic playground for me to compose new and old ASL poems and stories.

As Dude was playing music and Juli was listening, I was improvising a nice little ASL poem with similes between "blue eyes" and "blue sky", and between "white glowing lights in the eyes" and "sunshine in the blue sky" (ASL rhymes also). And, the "black bird flying" in circle.

Taking an advantage of the visual-spatial nature in sign language, I can transform an imagination into reality. For example, I produced in ASL: a black bird flies in large circle in the sky and the circle becomes smaller and smaller as it gets closer and closer to the listener.

This intactile imagination transformed into a tactile experience of physical touch through ASL. Baby at this stage is fascinated by spirals and by coincidence I could incorporate this shape into language.

The partying cats

Juli partied with her new friend Elliott the cat, celebrating her grandfather K's birthday. It was her first time seeing a cat.

Likewise, Elliott, who had never met a baby before, appeared to be genuinely interested in Juli. He also learned a new ASL sign for "cat".

Video clip: "Juli and Elliott the cat befriending"

Literacy deveopment: peek-a-boo animals

"Mother Goose" is basically a collection of nursery rhymes and stories for infants, toddlers, and children. In speech, rhymes come with the repetitions of sounds in words. In signlan, rhymes are done with the repetitions of ASL visues.

The "5" handshape is the first phonological unit of ASL that appears in infants' early linguistic development in signlan. Below shows an example of one of the ASL nursery rhymes produced by Canadian ASL natives.

In this ASL nursery rhyme "Peekaboo animals", there is a couple of aspects in ASL rhyme.

The "5" handshape is repeated in all ASL words before and after peek-a-boo: lion, tiger, bear, monkey, and spider.

And, the location parameter of each of these ASL words of animals is in order from the top (head) to the waist level.

Baby may enjoy this rhyme especially with the anticipation of the last animal that will tickle her/him.