And my first word is....

boob.

Just one more piece of evidence that RJ is still a big fan of his milk source. On Sunday night, after RJ was finished nursing, he looked up at me, then looked at my boob (which I had not put away yet), grabbed hold of the nipple and with a very deliberate, determined look, said, "b b ba boob".

RJ has many sounds in his repertoire. His most frequent vocalization for just about anything is "dah, dah" or "daht daht" He has also said, "bahbahbah" "bleh", "hah", "arr", "ttt", "puh" and my personal favorite, "mommommommom" or "mommy". There are also some sounds that he babbles that are pretty much gibberish.

He also seems to occasionally match his vocalizations with the referents. This is something babies typically start to do around 10 months or so. First words typically occur around a baby's first birthday. To "count" as a first word, the vocalization has to be linked to the word's referent - so if RJ said "ball" it would have to be in reference to a ball.

For example, RJ says "dah dah" all the time, not just when he sees daddy or wants daddy (although one could argue that throughout the day he's asking me "where's daddy?" by vocalizing), so it's a pretty safe bet that RJ is not totally linking dahdah with daddy the person. However, he has only used the mommommommom vocalization at times when he sees me or wants me to appear, so he *might* be starting to link the sound to me. Plus just this week, in his high chair, he looked straight at me, said, "mommommommom" and grinned ear to ear, looking all proud of himself (an emotion that he won't truly be capable of for another 9 months at least). He's also looked at Boca and said, "bah bah" and "at at". These all *could* have been coincidences, but as with the "mom" example, he seemed to be rather deliberate. Of course, I could be having mommy-vision with all of this as well!

There is wide variation though, so even though RJ appears to be developing these language skills a little early, he's certainly not a prodigy. His doctor was impressed with his vocals and said that he'll definitely be speaking soon. It's funny that I lectured on Language Development in my Human Development class just this week!

What we do know is that he understands who is who. For example, regardless of who says, "Where's Momma?", RJ will look at me, and in response to, "Where's Daddy?", RJ will look at Lance. So, he clearly knows our names, even if he's not always using them vocally, which is the normal progression of language development.