What’s the good word?

Sleeping in my arms at a family event;
April 20, 2014

To be completely honest, I don’t remember the first words of either of our daughters. It’s not that I wasn’t totally excited or involved at the time and I am sure we’ve written them down somewhere…maybe. But back then I didn’t have a stay-at-home dad blog, either. And it just so happens that this particular medium is the perfect way to mark the momentous occasion of Dimitri’s very first word.

What’s the word? The word is: “No.” More precisely, the word is “No! NO! NOOOO!”

At first I thought I was mistaken. I mean, how can such a happy, happy child start speaking on such a negative note? He started saying “neh-neh-neh” about a week ago and we weren’t quite sure what to make of it. “Nai” is Greek for “yes,” which was somewhat encouraging (since he hears Greek a lot from my wife and father-in-law) and “nero” is Greek for “water,” and that was a distinct possibility since he’s drinking from a “big boy cup” at meals now. But…no. Dimitri put all questions to rest earlier this week as I was putting him down for his morning nap. As he twisted and turned in my arms and resisted any of my efforts at getting him to sleep, the word welled up from the tips of his toes, through his lungs and straight out of his mouth: “Nooooo!”

Yeah, I thought it couldn’t be, but it was absolutely true. It wasn't wishful thinking, conceptual bias or my 40 year-old ears playing tricks on me. For the rest of the day, whenever I put him down in his playpen, Dimitri would immediately bust out his first – and unmistakably favorite – word, usually in triplicate, and as Arlo Guthrie might say…“with feeling.”

Hey, I guess we’re in good company. I suppose that if I had it my way, the little guy’s first word might have been something lighthearted and jovial like "huzzah!" The armchair intellectual in me might have even preferred a whopper along the lines of “neutrino” or “industrial proletariat.” But an unscientific poll from the “Circle of Moms” ladies indicates that “no” is one of the top 15 first words for the babies in their sample. They share a bit of consolation in their postscript, adding: “…if you're chagrined that your baby's first word was no (#7), you may be comforted to learn that yes is far less common.”

Of course, my wailing and gnashing of teeth is all strictly tongue-in-cheek. We’re all thrilled that Dimitri is an early talker and it’s a promising sign that he’s developing skills and intellect faster that we can teach him. It’s going to be an interesting journey, for sure.

Adventures in technology

This is what it was like back when
cameras were far less complicated.

“I wish I had a camera,” said my father-in-law as he sat behind me in the minivan.

“What do you want to take a picture of?” I asked.

“The baby,” he said. “He took the bottle from me and he’s drinking by himself. He’s also wearing my hat!”

I glanced back and saw my father-in-law laughing at the sight of his seven-month old grandson wearing the International Harvester hat that we bought for my father-in-law when he retired from the plant somewhere around a decade ago.

As luck would have it, I did have a camera with me at the time as I was carrying my iPhone. Now, my father-in-law typically hates all digital devices and he’s made no secret that he wants to gather them all up and throw them down a well. But when I gingerly offered my phone to him so he could snap the picture, he was all for it. Of course, there was a significant problem to overcome in that he’d never actually used an iPhone before—not to place a call and certainly not to take a photo. But he wanted so badly to take the picture himself that I decided it was high time to show him how to do it…even if I was driving along at 40 miles per hour down a busy thoroughfare smack in the middle of the lunch rush.

“Just point it at Dimitri and press the white button on the screen,” I said.

The instructions were more or less intuitive from my perspective but after a few seconds of almost complete silence, I stole a quick look to see my father in law making his best efforts to follow my instructions. The problem was that he had the phone completely turned around and was preparing to snap a picture of himself instead of little Dimitri. Imagine…his first picture ever with a digital device would have been a selfie!

Once we were stopped at a light, I took the phone and demonstrated things a little more clearly before handing it back to him. A short time later, he passed the phone to me and said, “See if I got anything good.”

When I had the chance, I checked the photos and found he’d taken about 10 pictures of Dimitri and they were all exceptionally cute. Here’s the best one from the batch:

Not bad at all for someone who typically tries to use his cordless phone to change the television channel. We’ll keep at it.