First Words

When I was a boy I asked my father: "if apes can't go to heaven, but men can, at what point does the ape evolve into an animal with an afterlife?"

He answered me with a question: "how many hairs need to be on a man's chin before he has a beard?"

He may as well have asked "at what point did your daughter say her first words?"

Cate goes to nursery three days a week and the staff keep a basic journal of what she did that day. On 1st February 2006 the entry includes the description "very vocal"; nine days later there was "alot of shouting most of which was mama and dada (so cute)." This was true up to a point, but neither "mama" nor "dada" was exclusively directly at either myself or my wife. What sounded like words were really just indeterminate babblings.

It was a few months after this that she started saying "ah-oh" just before she dropped something. Does this count as a first word? I doubt even the most magnanimous scrabble player would accept it as such. It wasn't until early September, on a trip to Italy, that I can remember Cate pointing at a dandelion and saying "flower". I would say that this was her first word.

Inevitably my wife disagrees! She says that this was just her first identifiable noun!