Signing Stories

Today Averi and I went to Meijer's to buy groceries since we have been gone all week visiting my parents and were out of everything. As is our custom, we stopped to look at the fish after we loaded our cart with all the groceries. At the one tank, there was a fish who was sitting on the bottom not moving except to move his lips. Averi became quite worried about the fish and signed "help" and then pointed to me and the fish. I said, "You want Mommy to help the fish?" and she vigorously nodded "Yes". I explained that the fish was just resting and that he didn't need help, but she was not convinced. Even as we moved on to other tanks, she kept signing "help" and pointing at me and then pointing back toward the tank where the fish wasn't moving. We had to go back and check on him several times and finally he had swum away. She was finally satisfied that the fish was okay and we could move on to other things.

When I told Averi that we had to say "bye bye" to the fish, she quickly did so and then signed "music". It took me a minute to figure out what she meant, but then I remembered that two weeks ago when we had been at Meijer's we had passed one of those little screens where you can push different buttons and hear samples of music from different albums. They happened to have one with kids albums and she had enjoyed pushing the buttons to hear the songs. I was so amazed that not only had she remembered something we had done only one time two weeks ago, but she now associated it with part of our "routine" when we visit Meijer's just like looking at the fish or riding the mechanical horse after we pay for our groceries.

I am again so thankful that we decided to teach Averi signing because without them, she wouldn't have been able to communicate to me what she was thinking about the fish or ask me to take her again to the "music" and we would have missed out on several special moments together.