Last night, when Kat and I took the girls up to bed, Claire and I had our first conversation. Kat was sitting in the glider giving Brooke the last of her bottle, and I was sitting on the floor leaning against the crib, with Claire propped on my bent legs, facing me. Claire was already finished feeding, and as she often is at bedtime, was very alert and smiling a lot. I was smiling back, and she said, “Eh.”

Most of the sounds that come out of the babies’ mouths are crying or hiccup related. They’ll make other sounds occasionally, but they definitely seem random and accidental, not deliberate. There’s been a lot of happy cooing during their first few months (almost four now), but it’s all been unidirectional - cooing by us at them. For Claire’s first “Eh,” I didn’t get too excited.

“Eh,” I said back, not expecting a repeat of the likely coincidental sound.

“Eh.” [Meaning, “Thanks for all the food.”]

“Eh.” [“You’re welcome.”]

“Eh.” [“Mommy is pretty.]

“Eh.” [“Yes, she is. You are, too.]

By now I was excited because her sounds were obviously on purpose, and even more than that, she seemed to be responding to my sounds, not just cooing to herself. I paused a few seconds, and Claire paused, too. “Eh,” I said again. [“I love you.”]

“Eh.” [“I love you too, Daddy.”]

Kat couldn’t see Claire’s face from where she was sitting, but she could hear her and I was telling her how Claire kept smiling and watching my mouth. We keep a calendar for each girl to record “firsts”, and we discussed how we should describe this one. I suggested, “first deliberate vocalizations”, but that wasn’t cute enough for Mommy. (Daddy knew that already, but it was funny to suggest.) It’ll probably get memorialized as something like, “first conversation”. It lasted about two minutes, but we were excited the rest of the night.

We’ll probably spend most of today trying to make Claire talk.