“Mamma, Dadda,” my baby boy says quite often, sometimes in reference to his mother and father, but honestly, oftentimes in reference to… whatever. (They’re catch-all words, and I’m convinced that cavepeople named men and women “mamma” and “dadda” after hearing babies babble it). Anyway, with our son Delmar almost 18 months old, my wife and I have been expecting some first words, and recently he has said three of them, though it’s not entirely clear which was first. Here’s what those three words were.
Having never raised a baby before, up until recently I always assumed it would be clear what someone’s first word was. In my best dreams, I’d be walking down the street with my wife and child, and Delmar would look under a lifted Jeep and say “Differential!” But alas, this has not happened.
Instead, it’s been lots of “mammas” and “daddas,” and even though he’ll say them in reference to my wife Elise (not her real name) and I, the frequency with which he uses those words in reference to other things means I’m unsure if I can count them as his official first words. Recently, we’ve had three other words come into contention.
The first is the best basketball player of all time, LeBron (James). My wife got me a special LeBron James Barbie doll, something that, upon writing this, I’m realizing should be embarrassing if I had any shame. But I don’t have shame, and thus we have a doll of Akron’s own King James on one of our shelves. I pointed to the doll and said “LeBron”; from then on, any time I ask DelMar “Where is LeBron?” he points to the doll. So he knows what LeBron means, but can he actually say the word?
Kind of. I often see him pointing at the doll saying “BLLLLL,” which I guess is how he says “LeBron.” Is this his first word? I’d have been delighted, if so. But then I heard him say “BLLLL” another time, nowhere in sight of our blow-moulded all-time points leader. Alas.
Recently, though, he’s started to use a term that sounds a lot like “Apple,” except he adds something to the end to where it sounds like “Apple-dah.” Could this mean apple sauce? We don’t feed him apple sauce, so I doubt it. Is he actually referencing an apple? Well, I pointed to an apple recently and asked: “What’s this”? And sure enough: “Apple-dah!” But then this morning, in bed, he started shouting “Apple-dah!” over and over, nowhere near any apples.
View this post on Instagram
This brings us to later this morning, while he was eating on his toddler tower (basically, a stool so babies can use the counter and see what we adults are up to). I grabbed a little red wooden car toy that my parents had shipped from Germany and asked “Hey Delmar, what’s this?” His response surprised me, especially since it featured a heavy Brooklyn accent:
“Cah!”
Holy crap! Delmar said car! Holy smokes! I grabbed Delmar, ran him outside, and with my heart racing, I slowly raised my finger and pointed to my gold BMW i3. “Hey Delmar,” my voice quivered, my heart thumping. “What’s that?”
Time stopped. The world became blurry. A bright light shined from the heavens, and a feeling of warmth enveloped my body like a hug. I turned to my son, he smiled and said it.
“Cah!”
YEEEEHAWWWWW! HE SAID CAR HE SAID CAR! HOLY CRAP HE SAID CAR!
Needless to say, I told everyone, and will be spoiling this child for giving me the greatest gift a car-geek could ever receive. There’s still a chance that car is not his first word, since he may end up saying it all the time, nowhere near any cars, and if I’m honest I think “apple” may have a slight edge at the moment, but I’m still amped!!
My kid and I are about to start a lifetime of talking about cars. I can’t wait!!
For whatever reason, my kid initially referred to any scrap, dirt, poop, but also tree roots with a throat sound that sounded like gears grinding. “Khhrrrrrrhhhh.” Normal words entered the vocabulary soon enough, but that amused us to no end.
But can he say the word rust yet? He probably needs to learn that one pretty soon if he wants to talk about Jeeps with his dad.
It is a great moment! My kid first auto things involvement were with buses.
Even better you don’t have that many old cars you used to, otherwise one of his next words would probably be rust when pointing to one of them…
Hi David,
enjoy raising your mini-you,
i would have not imagined an original “La vache qui rit” in your fridge…
All the best,
Louis.