First Words

Did I hear that right?
A couple of weeks ago, Zoe and I got to spend time with Zoe's cousin Alena. Alena, who is about 6 months older than Zoe is always a few steps ahead, and it's fun to see that what Alena is doing now, Zoe will be doing soon.
When we saw Alena last time, she had a vocabulary of about 50 words. As she ran around the house stopping to dance in front of the stereo, or nibble on some snacks, she would yell out various things as she whizzed by. I didn't really pay much attention to the specifics of her speech as it sounded a lot like "la la da bashdosien gsldhsenkg" (except for the occasional and very clear "HI!"). Zoe does a lot of incoherent babbling while she practices her speech so I thought this is what was mostly being said. But her mommy, Angela kept saying "yes honey, you're dancing" and "that's right, there's the baby" and so on. Angela was tuning into a special frequency that only mommies can pick up. I was baffled. I did not hear anything in that babbly speech that I could recogonize as English. I began to think that Zoe would start talking in another few months and would be trying to express her deep needs and thoughts to me, and I would say "yes honey, I'm making lunch" much to her disappointment of not being understood as saying "I want to wear the blue shirt". I wondered if I would be able to discern my baby's speech from all the jabber that stumbles out of her mimicking mouth.
This morning as I was feeding our big orange cat, Zoe watched while holding onto the safety gate between her and Sid's food dish. Sid brushed by Zoe and I said "Look Zoe, your kitty is coming to say 'hello'". She held out her hand to his fur as he sauntered toward the gate, under her hand. "KiTTi"!!! she said. I thought I was imagining what I had heard. Maybe a coincidence. "yes Zoe, that's Sidsy kitty". "KiTTi"!!! she said again. I couldn't believe it! Her first word.
Later in the park I told her not to put the mud pie in her mouth. "that's dirt. you can touch the dirt honey, but don't put it in your mouth".
"dirt"! Zoe said.
No, coincidence.
"Dirt"!!!
Wow. My little prodigy. Now I am paying close attention to all the babbles. Later, as I pulled her out of the car she yelled "Dirt"! We went in and played with toys. "Dirt"! Okay, maybe dirt was a coincidence, but Kitty was definitley intentional.