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You've probably seen those awful TV ads with the digitally enhanced talking babies trying to sell you pizza and insurance or you might have had the misfortune of sitting through one of the three (!) Look Who's Talking movies, but believe me, none of that can compare to the first time that your real live baby opens his mouth and says his first word.

Jack is a year and a half old and his vocabulary is around 300 words and growing every day. He's on quite a roll right now, picking up things from Mommy and Daddy, the lady who runs the library group, random passersby on the street, and of course those helpful people on TV. This is great when he learns how to say “Barack Obama,” but not so great when he blurts out “douche bag.” Who says that television can't be educational?

He yammers on so much these days that we almost take it for granted now and find it hard to remember when he couldn't talk at all. Like most babies, he started with the usual routine of “oohs” and “ahhs” and the ever popular “uhnns.” When he became interested in ceiling lights, my wife and I became very familiar with the specific nasal grunt that to him represented “ceiling lights.” Everywhere we went, he would look up from his stroller and see some lights, and then gesture wildly and grunt grunt grunt until we looked up with him and acknowledged his discovery. It was funny the first couple of times he did that, but it quickly became extremely frustrating to break away from whatever I was doing and answer “Yes, I see that light,” over and over and over again.

In retrospect, I know that he was simply eager to interact with the world around him, and that my responding to him was essential to reinforce in his mind the relationship between a spoken word and an object. I am also fairly sure that the people in the next aisle at the grocery store who couldn't see the baby in the stroller probably thought that I was suffering from a severe case of Tourette's.

We were stunned on his first birthday when Jack blinked in an exaggerated manner and clearly said the word “eyes.” Eager to encourage more of this genius-level behaviour, we applauded and prompted him to say it again. He liked the attention enough to repeat it a few more times. I was quite excited by this new skill and proceeded to tell everyone I knew about his advanced development. He must have grown tired of the spotlight because he didn't speak again for weeks.

Eventually, he broke his vow of silence and started saying “agoomb.” To this day, neither my wife nor I have any idea what “agoomb” means. He simply started saying it one day and then kept repeating it for weeks, never in the same context twice. We felt like anthropologists trying to communicate with a tribesman on the plains but we simply could not figure out its definition or correct usage.

Once he picked up a number of actual words, “agoomb” just disappeared, until recently, when my wife remembered it out of the blue and casually said it in front of the boy. He responded with an echoing “agoomb” but didn't offer any further explanation and then proceeded to use it a good dozen times over the next couple of days, tossing out an “agoomb” while playing with blocks on the carpet, or gazing out of his stroller at passing traffic or smearing avocado into his ear canal.

Thanks to constant re-reading of all his nighttime and lullabye-themed books, Jack started to develop an obsessive interest in stars, and one day he suddenly blurted out “ars!” Of course it came out sounding much more like “arse,” but thankfully we don't live in Britain, so it wasn't quite as embarrassing as it could have been when he took to yelling it out so loudly in public. From there he started to mouth out other one syllable words, like “nose” and “ears.” They sounded more like “nuhs” and “urhs,” but combined with a simple hand gesture or two, we could understand it.

“Cat” was an interesting example of how fluid language can be when you're a toddler. When Jack first started saying it, he pronounced it “yat,” which for some unknown reason soon evolved into “ya-ya.” Every time we came across a cat in one of his boardbooks, he'd happily chirp “Ya-ya! Ya-ya! ”

We found it so funny that my wife and I found ourselves calling them “ya-yas” as well, so it was kind of weird when one day a few months later, he simply started to use “cat” instead, followed closely by the more sophisticated “kitty cat.” I have to admit that I'm also a little sad to see the “ya-ya” go. It's hard to accept that my little guy's growing up. I miss hearing him say it, so I occasionally try to coax it out of him. He still tosses out a “ya-ya” from time to time, but I think he's just humouring me. I guess that I'll simply have to accept that they're called “kitty cats” from now on.

It's amazing to see how quickly his vocabulary grows and expands. When Jack first became obsessed with buses, he was quick to point out each and every “dus” that passed us by. It took a while, but once he figured out how to pronounce the letter “b” he was ready to learn all the different types of buses -- “School bus!” “City bus!” and my favourite, “Wheeltrans!” He gets so excited whenever we take the TTC anywhere that he usually yells out at the top of his lungs, “City bus! City bus! City bus!” all the way up to the subway station. From that point it's “Train! Train! Train!”

Now that he's entered into the echo or parrot phase, his word count has drastically increased, and this has made the conversations around the dinner table a little bit more difficult. If I had to apply a movie rating to my speech I'd say that I'm definitely an “R” while my wife would probably get a “PG-13,” so we've had to clean up our acts, using swear word substitutions like “sugar,” “peas and rice,” and “eggroll.” But even substitute swears can be potentially dangerous, and I live in fear for the day that my darling little Junior blurts out “What the eff?!” in public.

Jack's verbal skills are improving so quickly that the nostalgic part of me wants to follow him around with a tape recorder so that I can capture all of his cute misprounciations, like when he asks for some “mo-ah stuwabearries” at snacktime and when he wants me to read a book “anudder tie-em!” Pretty soon his little three word sentences will grow in length and complexity and he'll learn how to pronounce the letter “r.” We'll forget how he'd yell out “daily show!” whenever he saw Jon Stewart's face on TV and the way he'd ask demand “Kitchen. Cheese. Do it.” He'll start to use big words and then his voice will change and we'll have to pretend that it doesn't make us want to cringe and/or laugh. He'll get mouthy and start talking back to us and then hopefully he'll go through a silent, sullen phase. Then we'll pull out whatever the music format is that replaces the obsolete mp3 player and listen to his tiny squeaky toddler voice saying “Poop poop poop poop poop!”