‘Say Daddy First!’ Out Now

People ask all sorts of questions when they meet same-sex parents. Some are obnoxious, some are presumptuous: who’s is he? which one of you is ‘the mom’? where did you adopt him from?

Of course, there are plenty of good questions, too. One question that plenty of people ask us is what is he going to call you? Great question! I wish I knew the answer. Our intent was to have him call Jason daddy and call me baba, since that’s what we said in Farsi growing up. The problem is, my first language is still English, and whenever I’m talking to River in the third person, I always call myself dad or daddy, even though that’s supposed to be Jason’s name!

I’m really hoping River will figure this out on his own and come up with unique names for each of us. And whether it’s dada or baba, he’s definitely going to say some word for father first.

But that’s not the case in families with a mother and father, is it? Most of the time, the first word is mama. But I know that there are plenty of dads out there who are super competitive and would absolutely love to claim the trophy of being baby’s first word.

Well, that’s why I made Say Daddy First! I based it on my in-no-way-scientific theory that reading baby a bunch of words that start with the letter D would make baby more likely to say dada first. Of course, all the extra reading time spent with dad isn’t going to hurt, either.

So I came up with a bunch of words—some common, like dog, and others less so, like dung beetle. Every few pages I mixed in some hilarious illustrations of dads being silly with their kids.

I think you’ll have a lot of fun reading it with your littles—even if they’ve already got a few words under their belt. You can find it exclusively on Amazon.