By Okay, I don’t have any video proving it—but my wife and I are pretty sure Isabella said her first words. It’s not supposed to happen yet, but do I look like the guy that will let society tell him what is and what is not possible!?
Since she turned 2 months, she discovered her voice. She’s been babbling and changing the pitches of her cries depending on what she wants. When she’s angry, she legit looks at you and raises her voice to shout-cry. When she’s hungry, it’s that long ear-piercing screech where she holds her breath for super long and I get terrified it can cause her harm. But then she also does this awesome little thing a few times a day where she just wants to have a conversation. Either Stef or I will put our face right up to her and talk to her. She then starts looking at our mouth and tries to move her own with sounds. As soon as you know it, she’s having a conversation with us in her own baby language.
Although a little bit early even on that front, it’s all normal at this age. But what’s not normal was that she actually repeated back a phrase!! During one of these talk-back sessions, my wife Stefany began repeating to her the phrase “Eu ti amo” (Portuguese for I love you). After saying this repeatedly for about 5 minutes, Isabella suddenly repeated “Eu”, the first word, right after my wife said it. Stefany went on to say the next word “te” and she immediately responded by completing the phrase with a distinctive and very clear “amo”! We couldn’t believe it. Obviously we freaked out and made a huge deal, which then caused Isabella to completely get startled to the point that she no longer wanted to utter a single thing. It was creepy to hear her say it- kinda like watching a baby doll speak if it had no batteries on. But it was also pretty damn awesome because my daughter, who was living all crammed up in water just 2 and half months ago said her first words!
Since then, we’ve been trying to have her repeat the incident. She seems to like the phrase. We managed to get her to say the first word again and then something that sounded like the second word. But we haven’t heard the full phrase yet.
Could it be possible?
After the incident—all articles I’ve come across from major publications specify that babies won’t start saying their few words until 4 months at the earliest. While I don’t believe she actually knows what she was saying (compared to a 4 month old who can associate the word “dada” with their father), I definitely do think that it is possible for a child that young to be able to repeat what they are hearing. In fact—after searching through message boards & youtube, it didn’t seem to be that uncommon:
On this traveling couple’s Instagram page, they said their baby started saying “mama” at 2 months when she was hungry! She now says it regularly. This baby from the UK repeats “I love you” very clearly & was captured on camera. This one here clearly says “hello”! There’s also this viral gem originally from Snapchat.
In the end, whether these babies can really start speaking that early on is subjective—however, one can’t deny that they were intently trying, all because their parents have taken the time to actively talk to them.
So there you have it guys, TALK TO YOUR KIDS. In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to record her in action!
Being Papa 