Aloha

The past couple of weeks I have been trying to teach Preston to wave. Every time we leave a room, or put a toy down I make sure to have him say bye bye and I will wave as he watches. A lot of times I do this while he is looking in a mirror so he can see himself as well. After a week or so he started wiggling his fingers on both of his hands but still didn't quite get it.
A few days ago he finally caught on and began bringing his fingers up and down every time I would wave to him, just like in this picture. Of course this isn't a recent picture (no thanks to our broken camera) but he really does look like that when he's waving. He always turns his hand toward himself and watches his fingers move. I wonder if it's because that is how my fingers look to him when I'm waving and he wants to make sure he does it right, I'm not really sure.
The past few days he's been waving constantly while he's in his car seat, or eating. I even saw him waving at the microwave this morning because he loves looking at the clock numbers. Obviously he still hasn't figured out the reason why people wave at each other. How do we teach a baby that we wave when we say hello, but we also wave when we say goodbye. If you think about it it's kind of a difficult concept. Wouldn't it be so much easier if we lived in Hawaii because ALOHA means both hello and goodbye. In fact according to Wikepedia "Aloha in the Hawaiian language means affection, love, peace, compassion, mercy, goodbye, and hello, among other sentiments of a similar nature. It is used especially in Hawai'i as a greeting meaning hello and goodbye. Variations occur based on circumstances when used as a salutation." Wait a second. Who knew something so simple could be so complex. Maybe hello and goodbye would be an easier concept to grasp. Who knows. I wouldn't mind living in Hawaii anyway...