"It's not bothering me; we're all used to that," smiled Kathy Simmons, standing behind a desk in the classroom where she was teaching a Baby Talk course.
It was the second night of the two-week January class, taught over alternating Tuesdays. Several were present for the class, which started promptly at 6:30 p.m. in a fifth-floor classroom of the West Tennessee Healthcare Building.

Rhodes wanted to get a jump-start on the signing because John Michael's day care would soon be welcoming a hearing-impaired baby, and three of his teachers also were in the class.

"Let's review what we learned the first night," said Simmons as she began signing, in alphabetical order, the lineup of words such as "apple," "baby" and "bed."

"Signing is a great way to help strengthen the child-parent bond," the instructor said. "Because it is a form of communication, it may even help your baby begin to talk.

"Role-playing is good. The key is to be patient and not get frustrated," she cautioned while continuing with the review list.

One of the words was "car." How can you better demonstrate the signing? asked Simmons, pretending to turn a steering wheel.

"Vroom!" the class said.

"Vroom!" John Michael repeated to the amusement of everyone.

"He's getting the hang of it," Simmons laughed.

The first sheet took them down to the word "horse" before the class flipped it over and began working with "hot," "hungry," "ice cream," a word which they had fun imitating licking a cone.

"Milk" is an important word to learn and one babies can pick up very quickly, said Simmons, who folded her fingers into her palm to resemble a bottle.

"Babies associate milk with comfort," she said. "The baby is thinking, 'milk makes me feel good.'" He is thinking milk followed by a dry diaper followed by a nap. Now that is comforting.

"I love it when dads come," Simmons said to the roomful of mothers as she explained that it's a good chance for fathers to strengthen the bonds of communication, too.

Other new words included "shoes," "sit," "socks" and "wet."

"Your babies' little bitty hands are so cute when they are signing. And for some reason, they are fascinated with 'zipper,'" said Simmons as she moved her hands up and then down to indicate the zipping, or unzipping, of clothing.

"Now, let's go over our words again before we learn our alphabet."

"I enjoyed this a lot," said Debbie Robertson, of Jackson, as the class drew to a close. She came with her daughter, Ashley Pennington, who is moving from Memphis to Jackson and has a 6-month-old son, Cannon.

"It was very interesting, and I'm anxious to practice signing with my grandson," Robertson said.

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By Gwenda Anthony
http://www.jacksonsun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060207/LIFESTYLE/602070313/1024