stars and flowers

I've been composing this post in my head for weeks, just didn't have the time to actually post it. Elijah's signing has really taken off. But you have to watch closely and pay attention to context a lot. For example, Daddy and horsey look the same. So do flower, cat and eat. This can sometime cause confusion. For example, one time Elijah was playing with his sorting bucket that had circle, square, triangle, and star shapes. He looked up at me and signed eat. When I asked if he was hungry, he shook his head. Then he signed eat again. What on earth? I put him in his high chair, but he wasn't interested in food. A few days later we were looking at a book about Christmas. On the last page, where there was a star over a stable, he got excited and signed eat. It was then that I realized he was signing flower! The shape sorting incident came back to me and I knew he thought the star shapes were actually flower shapes. Elijah does like flowers. We have some outside of our apartment building, and he always points them out to me. But I never thought of flowers as stars, or stars as flowers. Although I do like the idea. It intrigues me to think of the universe as a grand cosmic bouquet instead of it being a vast cold impersonal empty space with balls of burning gas separated by millions of light years.