And the first word is (drumroll please).........

Coco. Yes the Chocolate Lab gets the honor of being the recepient of Annalise's first purposeful word....sigh. Annalise has babbled Mama, Dada, Nononono, and Nana for months now but we have never consistently gotten the impression that she KNEW what she was saying. Dada has been her favorite word (which has made Brian very proud); however, while Dada can be Brian, Annalise has also labeled things such as a flushing toilet, the dogs, Mommy, and to my total humiliation almost any random teenage boy "Dada".

Yesterday morning, I was feeding Annalise her bottle when Coco wandered up to the edge of the sofa to say good morning. I rubbed her head and said "Hi Coco", just like I do most mornings and Annalise spit out her bottle and said "Coco". I looked at Brian and said "did you hear that or am I imagining things?" He agreed that she said Coco but we kind of wrote it off to be one of the other words she babbles without association. However, the rest of the morning she followed Coco around the house calling her name, she'd point to Coco from across the house and say "Coco" and last night she walked up to Coco as she was trying to sleep on the couch, gently patted her (which is drastically different from the fur, tail and ear pulling that normally occurs), laid her head on Coco's side, and said "Coco". At that moment, I knew my months of preaching Mama and Dada in hopes that we would be the objects of her first purposeful word were in vain. Coco has the honors.

Well, in this I will count my blessings. I'm thankful the word wasn't "no" or "mine", and I will admit Coco has endured much baby induced torture over the past few months so this is a nice reward for her. I will however keep this story in mind for the first opportunity I have to dole out a Mommy guilt trip. I can hear myself now. "Right in the midst of your second week with the stomach flu, after poor Mommy had spent day after day changing 2 to 3 poopy diapers an hour, staying up with you at 2 in the morning, making you special food, rocking you when you were fussy, etc. you decided to say your first word. And it was Coco, not Mama, but Coco" (all true by the way, I didn't have to resort to concocting some story about how it was an uphill walk both on my way to school and back home). Wow, even as I wrote this I am shocked at how easily the words of my future guilt trip flow........this must be a new super power I somehow acquired during the birthing experience!