O Tannenbaum!

As his mother and personal secretary, I am supposed to keep a record of Finny’s many firsts. The problem is he won’t slow down long enough to give me a chance to keep track. On Wednesday, November 18, he took his first steps, just twelve days shy of fourteen months old, and it seems that now that he’s a big shot walker, he’s also a big shot talker.

I could tell you for sure what his first legitimate word was: “Dah Dah!” Always said with full tongue and teeth, accompanied by a smile and followed by an exclamation point. He definitely knows who his Dah Dah is, but sometimes we question whether he thinks Ma Ma is Dah Dah too. Either that or he is already capable of mocking me, which I’d rather choose not to believe.

As far as his second word goes, it’s hard to say because suddenly sounds are spilling out of his mouth so fast I can hardly catch them. When I refer to words here, they are not words in the complete word sense. All sounds are not present at speaking. But they are sounds that get so close to the actual word that we have achieved understanding.

“Daw!” he says when he sees a dog. “Baw!” he says when he sees a ball. “Juh!” he says when he sees his cousin Jane. “Joe!” last night when he pointed continuously to a picture of David’s Aunt Joanne. “Dri!” when he wants a drink, which is always followed by a look of self-satisfaction when he is presented with his cup. Then he takes a one-handed slug out of it and hurls it across the room.

Perhaps the most common word of all though, the one that is clearest, most frequent, and second only to Dah Dah, is:

“Tree!”

Driving in the car, he points, “Tree! Tree! Tree!” Playing in the family room, looking out at the yard, he points, “Tree! Tree! Tree!” And now, he is enticed day and night by that glowing Tannenbaum in the corner which grows toys right out of its branches, so whenever we pass by the living room, he points, “Tree! Tree! Tree!”

I think it is quite fitting, Little Finny, that your first word is tree. I think it means you’re going to love the outdoors like your Mama. We will take many hikes in the woods and you will love the beauty of the sunlit shadows that a canopy of trees creates as it sprinkles tiny jewels of light across the path. You will love the fresh, clean smell of the trees and the leaves and the occasional brook you will find there. You will look forward to nothing more than the ache in your muscles after a day of hiking up and down through reds, oranges and yellows.

Or you will be a logger. At which point, we will have a long talk about the beauty and majesty of trees. And then you will lecture me about the necessity of chopping down trees. And then we will go back and forth for a while and then finally just agree to disagree. Then we will probably each take a sip of tea in an awkward silence, avoiding eye contact and trying to figure out how two people who love each other so much can see things so differently.

Hopefully, it’s the first scenario because not only are trees beautiful but hiking also makes a cheap and easy vacation, and I don’t want us to fight.