by Laura Falin posted in Parenting

This BabyCenter community thread recently got me all nostalgic. Everyone was sharing whether their baby said "mama" or "dada" first. In our case it was "dada." All four times. FOUR. I couldn't get one kid to humor me, try as I might.

But then I started thinking about what I consider their real first words. After "mama" and "dada" come the words for everything else. It's SUCH a fascinating thing to watch. I can't think of another period in a child's life when you can so clearly see the wheels turning, and their brains working overtime to try and figure out words and objects and this whole complicated idea of communicating.

My daughter's first word for something other than her parents was "dog." All of our kids love the family dog, but she was on another level. She followed him around, and squealed when he licked her, and petted him constantly. She's now 12 and always maintained that affinity for animals. She knows, as only kids can, obscure facts about all kinds of creatures great and small. She's the only kid who has sole responsibility for a pet (Jay, the guinea pig, who hangs out on her shoulder while she does homework.) My 10-year-old is a mover and a fidgeter. I drop him off at school early each morning so he can run a mile before class starts. He loves it and I pray it calms him down...or even wears him out completely so he stops wiggling in class. His first word was &...