Recent Happenings

Jemma is already 10 months old...it really is unbelievable! It has been such a joy to see her distinct personality emerging. I'm continually reminded of how uniquely God has designed us for His purposes. I am in constantly wondering how God is going to use her unique design for His glory and what he has in store for her life :)


Jemma is quite a thoughtful baby and will hold a toy and study it intently. She enjoys sitting on the floor in her room and opening books and turning the pages. She makes us work hard for smiles and prefers to save smiles for those she knows well. She stares at strangers...like right through them! Apparently I did this when I was little too. She loves to defy gravity and be thrown around in the air. She also loves being tickled!


The child developmental weirdo inside of me desires to describe her development like this:
Motor: She is crawling everywhere, pulling up on everything, and cruising around furniture. She will walk when holding onto our hands and can stand for a few seconds unassisted. She eats EVERYTHING...dog food, carpet fibers, pieces of drywall, paper...I am constantly fishing things out of her mouth! She eats quite a bit of solids and can feed herself finger foods (exhibiting her pincher grasp). Some of her favorite finger foods are cooked carrots, bread, avocado, scrambled egg yolks, cheerios, rice rusks, nectarines, blueberries, and anything else she can pick up with her fingers!


Perceptual-Cognitive: She is learning to wave and clap her hands. She performs the "all done" sign with her hands when she is done eating (I often prompt her by saying it and she does the motions). She shared a toy with me yesterday for the first time! It was fun to hand it back and forth.

Speech & Language: She shouts sometimes when trying to get our attention and likes to experiment with her voice pitch, inflections, and different sounds. She says "da-da," "ma-ma," "ga-ga," "wa-wa," "guh-guh," and other various sounds, yet doesn't connect them yet to people or objects. She enjoys imitating sounds we are making, like when we make animal sounds she likes to try them out too. She LOVES to be sung to and always breaks out in a smile to a familiar song!


Personal-Social: Jemma has started to show some signs of stranger anxiety and doesn't smile at strangers. This cracks me up cause people are always trying so hard to get her to smile when we're out and about, and she just stares at them. She has become more clingy with Clay and I and needs to be near us when she's hungry or tired. She's clinging onto my legs a lot of the day at home while I'm doing house work! She has attached to a favorite blanket she likes to hold while she goes to sleep.