This is the American Sign Language sign for "more." This is also the first sign Waylon started doing around eight or nine months. Watching the realization on his face as we gave him another bite of food quickly after he made this hand motion was just magical. Since then, his grasp on other signs, their meanings, and his dexterity have grown exponentially.
We decided to teach our baby sign language while he was still gestating. Everything I was reading pointed to the fact that babies became aware of their environments cognitively long before their vocal cords can catch up. Other caregivers had success with less temper tantrums after using sign language because a nonverbal child was still able to communicate their needs without much frustration.
We have found this to be true with Waylon as well. When he starts to get fussy, we will ask with words and signs to see if he is hungry, or sleepy, or needing a diaper change. He also can tell us there is a baby in mommy's tummy and that he sees a ball.
We definitely plan to continue this learning with New Baby Johnson due in July, and most likely continue with our mode of teaching. Basically, we used the signs and said the words while we were doing the action. So if we were changing a diaper, we did that sign while we said "diaper change" at each dirty or wet nappy. Same thing with milk, more, eat, ball, baby, water, all done, bath, stop, no, yes, mommy, daddy, etc. Those were our main signs. We're branching out now that Waylon is older with more nouns and verbs - things like dog, cat, cow, potty, music, fish, stand, sit, help, friend, story, blanket, play, please, thank you, etc.
Here are some links to the sites we utilized in figuring out signs.
Baby Sign Language Dictionary
21 Words and Signs to Know
Handspeak
There are many more resources out there. Just do a quick search on "sign language" and you'll see a million options. Good luck!
