Good Boy

Madison has been working to develop Karsten's language skills for a couple of months now. She interprets his various noises into complete sentences to help us understand what he is trying to say. One of the first "words" she claims to have taught him is "dada" because that is one of the sounds he makes as he babbles. Well, she did work with him to tone it down on the repetition, to just say "dada" instead of "dadadadadadadada". 

Madison and Brookie have been trying to convince Sara that Karsten is now capable of talking, but she wasn't buying it. "He's just making sounds," she'd say. Meanwhile, Sara has been desperately trying to get Karsten to say "mama". 

So tonight as Sara was feeding Karsten just before bedtime - Karsten always gets silly with giggles and noises during this time - Sara once again tried to steer his babbling into a "mama". I was sitting nearby on the couch. As usual Karsten wouldn't do it. Sara tried again, "mama". No response. One more try, then Karsten tilted his head all the way back so that he could look at me and said, "dada" and smiled really big.

As of Oct. 28th, 2008 and much to her chagrin, Sara finally accepted that Karsten really has learned and said his first word. The actual date was probably August 28th, but today is the day that will be recorded in official Wilcox family historical records: the scrapbook.