Poorly boy. But a constant deleight.

Well, we've not been good at updating here, but one of the reasons is that poor Ainsworth has been pretty poorly. Starting with a chest infection before his birthday, he's been on two lots of antibiotics (one for the original infection and some eyedrops to help with some conjunctivitis) and still has a lingering chesty cough (that's been waking him at night) and snotty nose (that's getting sore from having us wipe it all the time. Well, I don't want snot on my jumper, thanks very much). And then he picked up a tummy bug which has had him in what looks like a lot of discomfort and has made for some particularly lovely leaky nappies. We kept him off all food for a whole day and his appetite has returned, but the nappies are only slowly retuning to normal. (And now he's gone and passed the tummy bug on to me, and I tell you it's not pleasant.)

But despite all of this - yes, even the extra disturbed nights - he is a constant source of amazement and delight to us every day. He is learning so much and it's a thrill to see him examine things to work out how they fit together. Or more often come apart. (In fact I got home from work yesterday to find beside my bed that he'd taken the cellophane wrapper off a completely sealed pack of - oh, hang on, perhaps I shouldn't say.)

His walking is slowly becoming more confident and he beams with pride as he wobbles from one place to another. He talks constantly. Such an expressive language he has - it would be lovely to know what he's saying a lot of the time because he clearly has a lot to say and wants us to hear it.

And that brings me to one of my favourite things - he's using an increasing number of signs to really communicate with us. We started Sing and Sign classes when he was only about six months old, and we're about to move up to the stage two class. It's only been recently that he's actually started to use the signs himself, but now he's realised they work he seems to be adding more and more to his repertoire. Off the top of my head, he currently uses the following signs fairly consistently and in an appropriate context

• milk
• finished
• hot
• monkey
• elephant (not the official sign
  but one he made up)
• home
• up
• bird
• dog
• music
• bee*
• cat*
• cow*
• rabbit*

(* these last few a only vague approximations, but he's working on them!)

I'm sure there are more - I'll update the list when I think of them. He sees us - especially me - using them much of the time so is beginning to make the connections between the signs, the words, and the objects. And all before he can talk. Well, before he can talk our language, anyway.