Martha praying

The Young Women sang/signed a song today in Sacrament meeting that was just beautiful. All the tear-prone women were teary. After Sacrament meeting, a branch visitor told me how he really wanted to pull out his phone and record the song, even though he knew that was really inappropriate. It was just that lovely!

I can totally commiserate. Every day when Martha says her prayers, I really want to whip out the camera! Even though I know it's totally inappropriate :) But I know she'd love seeing how she signed back when she was 3, and prayers are the only time she's signing without interruption! Ah, it's tough being a mom :)

When Martha prays, she makes a really hilarious face, like she's saying the letter F with a squint. And she holds that for the whole prayer. It comes from mouthing the word "for" - "thank thee for..." Then she's concentrating really hard after that, so she keeps the concentrate-y face. The result is that she looks like a really adorable squirrel while she prays.

Her other quirk right now is that she's either stuttering or else she's messed up with how many times you repeat an action for various signs. This is how a prayer might go: "Dear day (oh wait) Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you we-we-we can (whatever). Please bless Patricia Patricia can get better." It's always the object of the thanks/please bless that gets repeated. The other day she prayed in English, and she still said Patricia twice. Go figure. She also ended her prayer "with the name of Jesus Christ." I wonder how old she'll be before she adopts the typical English of "in the name..." instead.

She won't be this cute for much longer - even Sam, who's only 2 years older, has much more mature language, with fewer funny things...oh wait, as soon as I type that, I do remember that he signed "I want 2 (fingerspelled)b-e a .....whatever it was....the other day. I remember when we joined the branch, one of the kids signed "2 B" for "to be" and I about died laughing. Well, now my own kid has done it. There's no "to be" verb in ASL, so it messes with the kids a bit when they're trying to translate their thoughts from English. The little kids don't seem to have this problem, it seems to come up once they start reading. But still, nothing can be as cute as Martha's squinty squirrell face, so I'd better enjoy it while I can!