The Joy of a Baby's First Word

Grandparents.com

A few months ago, my daughter Julie was worried about her daughter, Charlotte, who, though almost 2, wasn't talking. 

"Charlotte points and says 'unk.' It's the only thing she says. She calls everything 'unk,'” she told her pediatrician. He nodded his head and said not to be concerned but if at her next visit Charlotte still was not talking, then they would begin to look for reasons why.

Charlotte at the time of this conversation was clad only in a diaper and sitting on the examining table crinkling its protective paper covering. "Unk" she said pointing at the paper. "Unk" she said, grinning and poking at her belly.

And unk it continued to be. Unk meant "belly." Unk meant "milk." Unk meant "ALL DONE!" Unk meant "I-am-not-tired-and-I-am-not-taking-a-nap-no-matter-how-much-you-beg! " 

"Say Mommy, Charlotte."

"Unk."

"Say Mimi."

"Unk."

"Say, blue. See, Charlotte? This crayon is blue."

"Unk," Charlotte would say, grabbing the crayon, or whatever else you were trying to show her, laughing and racing out of the room.

And then one day Charlotte said "Oh!"

She was playing with her crayons again, coloring Dora and Boots. "This crayon is blue, Charlotte. See?" her mother said.

"Oh!" said Charlotte, watching as her mother colored Dora's pants blue.

"Look at your pants, Charlotte. What color are your pants? They’re blue, too!" her mother just about trilled.

"Oh!" Charlotte repeated looking at her legs.

"And you know what? You have blue eyes, just like Mommy's and Mimi's!"

"Oh!" Charlotte said again, pointing to her eyes and grinning.

Oh, happy day! Our Charlotte was talking!

Her next word was "andy," andy for "candy." Andy became Charlotte’s favorite word.

In our front hall we had for years a small gumball machine packed full of M&Ms. For a penny, you get a fistful. It has long been every child's favorite fixture. We kept a small plate full of pennies next to it.

But one day when Charlotte was visiting, we ran out of pennies. "Andy! Andy!" Charlotte cried and instead of taking the time to find some pennies in a drawer or a coat pocket, I did what I do when I’m alone: I shook the gumball machine until some M&Ms rattled out. 

Big mistake. Charlotte, who was totally uninterested in all our attempts to teach her words, was immediately tuned into the concept of shake and take. "Andy! Andy!" she screamed in triumph, shaking and taking this booty until her little fists and cheeks bulged with candy.

The gumball machine is now hidden in an upstairs closet and every time Charlotte visits, she looks for it. "Andy?" she asks.

"The candy is all gone," I tell her. "The machine is broken."

"Oh," she has said. Just "oh." And "unk." And "andy."

Until the other day.

"Andy?" she yelled racing into my house, charging to the front hall.

"The candy is all gone," I said, as usual. "The machine is broken."

"Oh," she said furrowing her tiny forehead. "Andy. Gone. Broken."

And that was it. A breakthrough. An entire sentence.

Since then she has been spitting out words faster than the gumball machine ever spit out candy. "Admum," she says, Adam her brother’s name. And "Mommy" and "Daddy" and "Lulu" and "I, too" and "Grammy" and "Grampy" and "Dora" and "Auntie" and "Mimi" and "Davey" and "hot" and "wet."

"Say giraffe, Charlotte," we tell her. "Say Megan. Say cow." And she does.

Charlotte repeats everything. 

"Boo boo," she said just yesterday, running into my kitchen, pulling off her long pants to show off her bruised knee. "Big! Hurt. Fall. Ow. Cry. Sad," she told me, frowning.

Then she trotted over to a kitchen chair, dragged it from the table to the counter and said, “Cook? Pancakes. Bowl. Egg. I do.”

It’s amazing how language evolves. Unk, a staple, Charlotte's one and only word, replaced now by nouns and verbs that she actually puts together, not in sentences, but in ways that get her point across.

Her mother used to call a sunbeam "meetenoo." And boulders "goosands." I called olives "wallups." We use these words. They're part of our family vocabulary.

"Unk," we say to each other now pointing at something, an apple in a bowl on the counter, Charlotte's shoes on the floor. And we laugh. "No, unk." Charlotte says shaking her head. "Me. Apple. Eat. Chair."

We get her a chair. We cut up an apple. And as Charlotte eats, we smile.