The purpose

My daughter, Lily, is two years old, and for a while now I have wanted to jot down her first words, sentences, and antics, as somewhat of a digest of her toddler years. And so, here it begins. While Owen is not able to speak anything yet at just 19 or so days old, Lily is a chatter box and her words continue to make me smile and sometimes laugh out loud. Lily never really had baby talk. She didn't do the "ga ga" or "la la" phase, and she very quickly began putting 3 and 4 word sentences together. I recall anxiously waiting for her to do the whole "ga ga la la" phase and she simply skipped it. Her primary care provider says that at 2 years old, Lily is like talking to a little grown up!

Lily's first "real" word was "Hi". She would sit in the middle of the room and when someone entered she would quietly say, "Hi" with a big smile on her face. Of course, I would always meet this greeting with a "Hello baby girl!" which would exaggerate her smile and she would giggle at the stomp of my footsteps as I would kneel down to pick her up, whisking her into the air and giving her big kisses as her arms flew open and she'd giggle at being tossed about. From only a few months old, Lily's smiling face was enough for me to come home to after the worst day and forget all about it.

We spent most mornings in the car aggressively rehearsing her next "real" word, "Dada" and before long she picked it up. I remember being in bed one Saturday morning and my little girl calling out, "Dada" instead of crying. Now, "Dada" has evolved into Daddy, Dad, and when she is very distraught, "Dada". It melts my heart every time she says it.

Lily has not had much in the way of baby talk; although some of her word choices have been funny:

-My teaching her "Dada" first came with some baggage. She would use "d" in front of a lot of words, one of them being "bye". One time, when leaving Nanny's house, she said, "Die Nanny" instead of "Bye". Nanny said, "Lily, you don't want your Nanny to die, sweetheart" and Lily had this blank expression on her face. She simply shrugged it off and said, "Die". And we left.

-She regularly confuses "up" and "down". "Dada, I want down" she says (still) and she really wants UP.

-Another favorite is "I lub you" instead of "I love you." Sometimes, when hanging up from phone calls, I will say to Jen, "I lub you honey" and it serves as our inside joke.

-Lily also loves to watch "moowies". "I watch a moowie Dada?" she says. Only recently has she been calling them "movies" and it sort of makes me sad that she now knows how to say the real word!

-When Lily doesn't like something she says, "I can't like this Dada" to which I often reply, "Why can't you like this?" And she will say, loudly, "BECAUSE!" and that is the end of the conversation.

-Macaroni is commonly referred to as "lackaloni" and when preparing meals, she will ask, "Is dat mines?"

-One time, after a long cold where we were giving her an antihistamine for about a week, Lily and I were getting ready for bed and she said, "Dada, I need my medicine" and I said, "Oh, no, honey, you are all set now." Lily broke down in tears and cried, "But Dada, I like my benryl" I had no idea until Jen clarified that our daughter wanted me to give her Benadryl...apparently she liked the taste of unconsciousness!

-Cold and flu season often brought about sleepless nights (even when we gave her Benadryl to dry things up before infection would set in). One morning, at about 3am, Lily was crying and called out, "Dada!" and I went stumbling into her room. I picked her up and asked her if she wanted to rock. She said, "No. I want to share your minnows." "My what?" I asked. "Your minnows Dada. I want to share your minnows". It being 3am, and still half asleep, I had no idea what on earth my kid was saying. I said, "Lily, honey, Dada doesn't have any minnows. Can you show me?" And so she took me by the hand and showed me my PILLOWS on my side of the bed. "Here Dada," she said, "I want to share your minnows", to which she did for that night and several others. I got a little sad when she finally began to call them pillows.

-She has confused "talk" with "cock". And so when I am on the phone she will say, "Dada, I cock too?" And I will say "Sure, honey, you can TALK, too". She only recently has begun to correct herself with saying "talk" instead of "cock".

Day to day life with my little girl is always amazing. My hope is that I can jot down some stories of her growing up and share them with her years from now. For now, these are but some of the beginning moments that stick out in my memory of Lily's childhood. May it continue to be as amazing for HER as it is for ME.