while practicing waving tonight, the sequel said “bye-bye” plain as day. and then, of course, he continued to say it for the next hour. i was just remarking yesterday that he had kind of stopped jabbering these last few weeks. he growls and screeches plenty but it’s been a while since he’s done any real “da-da” or anything like that. so to hear him pop up with a real word, in context, today was a happy thing. and, really, i do consider it to be his first word. he’s made sounds before (ma-ma, ga-ga, da-da) but nothing that was really in context of a word.