Everyone wants to be the person who heard the baby's first word

My father says the baby said his name.

My husband says it was definitely “ball.”

I was in the kitchen for both alleged historical events, so I have been assigned the role of skeptical archivist.

Our son makes sounds while pointing at things. I like listening to him. I am not asking anyone to assess his development. The argument is about what the adults want to write in a keepsake book.

My father repeated the sound until it resembled his name more closely. My husband found the ball and asked our son to do it again. The baby became interested in a cabinet handle.

At dinner, somebody asked whether I was sad that I had missed the first word.

Until that question, I hadn't considered myself to have missed anything.

Now we have an event I wasn't part of, competing witnesses and a book with one little blank beside “First word.” That blank is doing an unreasonable amount of work.

I don't want to dispute every happy observation. If my father thinks he heard his name, he can enjoy that. If my husband remembers an afternoon with the ball, that can be a lovely memory too.

I do want them to stop announcing which adult won.

Last night I wrote down both accounts on a different page. I included the cabinet handle. My husband asked which version I would put in the actual box.

I said I might leave it empty for now.

He thought that was making too much of it. I think insisting that the box needs one winner is making more of it than the moment did.

Would you record the competing stories and let the formal entry stay uncertain? Or pick the clearest moment later and stop discussing it? I don't need a correct definition of a first word for this question. I need a way for our family to enjoy listening to the baby without turning me into the referee of an event where the main participant has moved on to the furniture.