That's My Boy

Growing up, Joseph (my bro) and I always communicated with our own little Deaf language -- an exaggerated form of Deaf expressions, ASL and general Deafisms. Wait, did I say "growing up," like it was a thing of the past? We still do it to this day.

As any good father would, I've passed it down to Noah. Yes, we sign to Noah, but I'm not talking about teaching him how to say "milk" or "more" or "Da-Da." This goes beyond labeling objects with certain signs. I frequently get Noah's attention with a Deaf yell (he laughs everytime), and Joseph never misses a chance to throw some Deaf colloquialisms his way.

Well, on Tuesday night I came home from working in Lubbock to find Noah army crawling across the floor (that's obviously a whole other post; it's coming soon, Libby tells me). After picking him up and kissing his chubby little cheeks about a hundred times, I put him back down to scoot across the floor, and Lib and I sat down for dinner. A few minutes into dinner, I looked at Noah and shot him a Deaf expression. He looked at me for a second, and then something happened to make me the proudest dad on the planet. HE RETURNED THE EXPRESSION!!!

"Quick, get the video camera!" was my frantic plea to Libby. Luckily, once Noah started, he didn't want to stop. We went back and forth all night, and Noah seemed to grasp the concept, because I would do it, and he would copy me every time. Yes, Lib caught some of it on video. And yes, I know this wouldn't be worth posting without it, so here it is:



It's funny even if you don't understand the expression. But it's a hundred times funnier if you do.

Also, I'm kinda posting this on top of Libby's post from earlier today. It's funny too, so be sure to look at it as well.

--Josh