Charlotte said her first word on Sunday.

It was epic.

I feel that as a speech therapist mommy I have been critical of judging Charlotte’s ‘firsts’. She was actually technically crawling (mobile) before I gave her a gold star on her report card for crawling because to me, it wasn’t crawling until she was actually moving forward – she moved sideways and backwards way before she moved forward.

When it comes to ‘talking’, Charlotte has been pretty vocal since early on; this is her at 2 months, starting to express her little inner personality {apologies for the long videos, I didn’t have time to edit them down this week. Just fast forward if you hate adorable-ness}:

and at 4 months:

Then the ‘throat clearing’ phase at 6 months:

And now at 8 months {I wouldn’t say this clip is very representative, seeing as how most of her communication as of late consists of screams and shrieks because she is frustrated with mommy for ‘cramping her style’, but this clip is definitely easier on the ears}:

Chris and I have been hearing Charlotte babble ‘mamas’ and ‘dadas’ in the most hilarious ways over the past few months and she has imitated ‘bye bye’ and ‘hey’ {I’m pretty sure it was a ‘hey y’all… in her best southern drawl, ha!} when listening to us talk. I was waiting for her to spontaneously verbalize with purpose before counting it as her ‘first word’ and she delivered on Sunday evening. I had her in her highchair munching on some frozen peaches {in her mesh teether, of course} to soothe her poor teething gums. When Chris came home from small group and walked through the door she looked right over to him.. ‘dada’, and without skipping a beat went right back to gnawing on her fruit. It was so adorable. She was so proud of herself. And so were we.