Baby Signs

Baby Signs is a sign language program developed to help infants communicate long before they are able to communicate verbally. This system is often very helpful for parents of children who are speech delayed. It gives a child who is not yet successful verbally another means to express himself and often helps the child become less frustrated, and, more importantly help strengthen the bond between parent and child that is developed through successful early interactions. Although Grace never had the opportunity to learn Baby Signs, I think that she has communicated with us this past week in her own ways, sending us her own “Baby Signs,” during this week, the anniversary of her birth.

As many of you know, Brien and I have been searching for another home for quite some time now. We have had many disappointments along the way, more than one house that we tried to purchase fell through for reasons that we had no control over. It has been a very long and frustrating process and each day that passes we have been growing more and more doubtful that we will find a house that will work for us. Last weekend, we looked at a couple more houses, and one of them was on a street named Halo Ave. The house was still occupied and one of the rooms was decorated in pink with a Tinkerbell boarder on the wall. I opened the closet to see how big it was and was immediately awestruck by a closet full of the prettiest pink infant dresses. Now you’d think that would have maybe upset me or made me sad, but, for some reason it didn’t. Instead, I had a very peaceful feeling in that room, and in every other room of that house. Today, on Grace’s birthday, we received a call from our agent who told us it looked hopeful that our offer was going to be accepted for the house on Halo Ave. Of course, we aren’t getting our hopes us because it is a short sale, so the bank has to approve the sale and hardship of the owner, etc. and we have been burned before by banks selling houses at auction that we were supposed to buy. But…I can’t help thinking maybe our angel Grace brought us to the house on Halo Ave. I wouldn’t mind having that address at all. Baby Sign number one.

Baby Signs numbers two and three came earlier this week at work. One of my clients brought her sister with her to therapy this week. Her sister and mom sat knitting in the waiting room while my client and I had our session. At the end of the session both sister and mom came back to the room. Her sister had a cute little blue baby bonnet that she was proud to show me she had completed. She asked if I knew anyone who could use the bonnet. Immediately, I remembered Gracie’s cute pink baby bonnet we received when she was born. I told her that Kaiser has some great volunteers who knit bonnets for babies and maybe she could donate her bonnet to a local hospital. She thought his was a good idea and replied “I have four more at home!” Then she asked if we wanted the bonnet for Bodie, our therapy dog. She brought much humor to a situation that she had no idea was probably tough for me to talk about. Gracie’s pink bonnet will surely go into her hope chest later today as we begin packing up her things.

Baby Sign number three I’ll leave right now as “to be continued,” as this will probably be a whole other post in itself. For now, I am comforted to know that she is still with us in many ways. We just have to continue to look for the signs and discover our own truth in the meanings.