Dadadadada

Milestones are always such exciting moments. It shows how much your baby is growing and becoming a fully functioning being.

There are the easy to gauge milestones like rolling over and first teeth where you can pin point to one specific date when it actually happened (or you first noticed).

Then of course there are the more difficult to determine firsts like sitting up. I mean there are the sitting up for just a second, the wobbly sitting ups, the sturdy sit ups and then sitting up on your own. Which one really 'counts'? (for me, it counted when he could sit up long enough to get a picture)

Another of these tricky firsts is baby's first word. Jude has been a pretty verbal baby for awhile now, but just recently he's really started to hang around one specific 'word'.

Dadadadadadada.

Within the past week or so, he's really started to do more and more dada's. When he wakes up in the morning the first thing he throws out is "dadadadada", when he woke up for a second from his nap earlier, he said a quick "dada" before falling back asleep. One would think with him being home with "mamamamama" all day he'd throw that out every now and then. But no.

We both aren't convinced that he's saying it specifically to Ryan, but you can tell it makes Ryan happy to hear it. The other day while we were all sitting on the couch I looked at Ryan and asked Jude "who's that" at the time he was rambling and when I asked he said "dadadada". I'm sure this was more a coincidence then anything, but Ryan lit up. This couldn't have hit at a better time as Jude has been in a really "mommy" mood lately. There were a couple of days where he insisted I hold him and wanted no one else. So, having him 'saying' dadada made Ryan feel good.

I of course can't wait until he's really communicating, but it's sweet to see the beginnings of it.

One of those moments he just wanted "mamamama"


Question: What were some of the most exciting milestones in your kids lives - if you have any? Were you 'quick' to cross them off or did you wait awhile?