First Word, or all the words getting clearer?

I usually stumble when people ask me about H's first word. Questions like, "Is he talking yet?" leave me grasping for the balance between the concise answer the asker probably wants, and the detailed answer I want to give.

The short answer, depending on my mood, is either "no" or "sort of."

The middle of the road answer is something like, "We know what he means, ha ha!"

The longer answer is that I am not a big believer in milestone counting. I didn't see my baby wriggling on the floor like a fish and then, suddenly, at a clearly definable moment, sitting up. I didn't see him crawling around and then, one day, suddenly getting up and walking steadily. He didn't go in a flash from smearing and tossing his food around to eating daintily with a fork. Everything he's accomplished has been gradual, a leisurely moving along the spectrum from "can't" to "can" with plenty of stops for exploring.

I think the best metaphor for his speech development is that of a clearing fog. He's been gabbling at us for quite some time, and slowly we began noticing words developing. He's getting plenty of initial consonants, and sometimes the correct number of syllables. He points around our faces saying, "Mm. Ah. No," for mouth, eyes, and nose. Then he giggles and goes after our toes... "Do!" His "thank you" sound something like "taco." Often, his consonants don't match (at least, not to our ears) but his syllables and inflections clearly mimic ours, and it's often evident that he knows what he's talking about. There's not a first word... it's all the words becoming clear.

In other news, J and I were married three years ago today.