Ready, Set, Learn!

The Your Baby Can Read experiment begins tonight!  I've been hoping every day that THAT day would be the day a box was delivered with "Your Baby Can Read" on the label.  Today was the only day I hadn't thought about it... and today, it came!  Hooray!  Eden's napping right now, but the fun begins as soon as she awakens.  It's a seven month program, and although a baby that begins at three months old may not be able to read by the completion of the program, a baby Eden's age should be able to.  That means, by the time she's two, she'll probably be reading!  I'm just so excited for her, I can hardly contain it!  

Not too long ago, I finished watching the 1 1/2 hour intro video and I now feel pretty prepared and extra motivated to dive into this adventure.  One thing I'm particularly excited about is that this program gives us fun, educational activities to do together every day that will produce big, life-long results.  It's totally a win/win for our family.  I don't have to wonder what I should do with her when she gets bored and she gets the benefit of enhanced learning the rest of her life - oh, and she has fun too.  I'm also relieved that this will be a great family activity for us to do together after the new baby comes.  Eden will be through with the program by the time our new girl is three months old and can begin, but I'm betting she'll love going through it with her baby sister and helping her learn.

I'm also planing on incorporating signs in any way I can.  I had decided to stop signing with Eden about two months ago, because I felt like she wasn't bothering to vocalize even though she seemed to have the ability.  She seemed content using the signs.  I regret that now because, even though she has begun to build a verbal vocabulary, there are still words she can't say yet (of course) and if she could sign those words, she might be a lot less inclined to fuss and whine.  She's not only learning to say new words, but it seems her desires (their range and their specificity) have grown significantly faster than her vocabulary has.  Her ability to communicate what she wants seems to have stayed the same percentage-wise... if that makes sense.  

In other words, a couple of months ago, she would have been content to say "eat," "milk," "all done," and other simple signs, whereas now that she can actually speak some of those words, there is so much more she desires to communicate.  Now "all done" does double duty for "I'm done eating" and "I want to get out of my highchair."  The complexity of her needs and desires has increased more than her verbal skill set allows for and I haven't been giving her any new signs to communicate her new desires.  Her fussiness has also spiked (see My Alien Child) which, more than likely, directly correlates to her lack of ability to communicate her needs.  Sigh.  Bad mommy!  I'll know with the next one.  And I'm starting back to signing immediately with Eden.