So, apparently this whole “first word” thing is a lot trickier to identify than I knew.
I guess I never thought about it much, but somewhere in the back of my mind I must have figured that babies make a lot of noises and then one day let loose that long-awaited first word and everyone whirls around to exclaim, “Did that baby just say, ‘hippopotamus?’”
Well, folks, I’m starting to think it’s a lot fuzzier than that (the notion…not the hippopotamus…well, probably that too, but I digress).
Lily will now repeat lots of sounds when we’re talking about something or showing her something. Show her a pom pom and tell her what it is, and you might get a lot of “pa pa pa” sounds as she tries to imitate you. Show her a duck, call it a duck, and you might get a lot of “duh duh duh” sounds.
She is also making sounds on her own to try to communicate and draw our attention to various items of importance (to an 11 month old). She makes a lot of “ba” noises when she sees things that should be “ba”-d at: balls, balloons, etc. She also makes more of a “buh” sound for birds which she does a LOT since her room has a bird theme. She makes “f” sounds when she sees flags. She pointed to the top shelf of her closet and shouted “baba” when there was a new baby doll she hadn’t seen before. She used to cry “mamamamama” when she was upset, and has more recently been saying “mama” (sometimes with a few extra ma’s thrown in) to get my attention – but I don’t count this as a first real WORD exactly. I really think she does say “bye bye” sometimes when I tell her to wave “bye bye” to someone, but that one’s just too easy and she doesn’t say it on her own.
She still loves to point ALL DAY LONG (as in, I name things for her ALL DAY LONG as she repeatedly points to things and looks at me questioningly if I do not supply the name as expected). Did I mention we do this ALL DAY LONG? Let’s just call her an “inquisitive” little child.
Anyway, her newfound skill of making slightly less random noises would have been obvious to anyone following us around while shopping today. In one store, you would have heard her shouting “BA BA BA BA BA!” paired with VIGOROUS pointing toward the ceiling to communicate, “Holy moley, Mommy, did you see that there is a freakin’ disco ball suspended from the ceiling in this store?!?!?!?” This was actually followed by about 5 minutes of “FFF FFF FFF FFF!” paired with vigorous pointing and tracking of the flags also hanging from the ceiling in the same store. We had a hard time leaving this store, clearly, and when we did finally get out of there and the clerk asked Lily if she could wave bye bye, Lily looked at her, then looked at the ceiling, pointed, and went “FFF FFF FFF FFF!” Apparently she did not understand how one could take the time to wave when there were flags to be spotted!
So I know you’re wondering - has she had her first word yet? Who knows…I’m going to play this one conservatively and wait to call it.
But sometimes it’s what you don’t say that counts…
Ha ha ha ha ha!!!!
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