first word

The twinfants are babbling up a storm. They love to experiment with sound. What Sylvia has in quantity, Rafa makes up for in volume. Sylvia has recently started playing with her tongue and I'm assuming she's learning how it shapes her sounds. She has been mimicking basic sounds for a little while, but without much recognition (if any) for their meaning. They understand quite a bit of what we say, though. Rafa mostly just does his own thing.

But, Sylvia now has her first word that means something an she uses it appropriately. Our home is mostly a Spanish speaking home. The nanny and D speak almost exclusively Spanish. I speak about 75-80% with the kids, but mostly English with D even if it's in front of the kids. As the kids babble along, we often pretend they said actual words that sound like their babbles and 'repeat' what it sounded like they said. So, "babah ohhhhf ay" becomes, "Daddy's home, yay!"

What's the first word, already? you ask?... Whenever I pick up the kids, I usually say, "arriba!" One day when I said that, Sylvia babbled something close to "ahb!" So I responded, "up!" And that's all it took. Now every time she want to be picks up and embraced, she crawls, walks, scoots over and proclaims, "UP!" And we happily oblige with arms, smiles, and giggles. I'm a little disappointed it's not in Spanish, despite all our efforts, but I suppose she needs to master rolling her R's first, anyway.