Signing Time

Oh, don’t worry: I will post pictures of the manna that literally fell from the sky this week, but for now, I wanted to share a sweet little thing that happened all weekend:

Vivienne and Lia love (love, love, love) Signing Time videos. Besides the Berenstain Bears, Signing Time is the reason we turn into the DVD aisle at the library every 2 weeks.

Vivienne has always taken to sign-language, but has just recently adopted it as her primary form of communicating with strangers: in the grocery store, on the sidewalk, and at the park, Vivienne has become the little signing girl. Or, at least, that’s what’s she’s hoping. (“I just want people to know that I’m that little girl!” she says passionately.) To complicate matters, she is so serious and so sweet about it. (This is quite a parenting conflict, if you can imagine!)

The only problem is that she isn’t deaf, and, well, she isn’t signing real signs (nope, just flipping around from letter to letter or making up dramatic little poses with her pinky finger). What’s worse is when a kind stranger bends over to speak pronouncedly to her in hopes that she reads lips, or – worse – when a kind stranger dusts off his or her own sign-language skills, and Vivienne responds with some kind of articulate verbal answer. This seems to confuse everyone…

But, her sincerity is precious.