Gemma bean

Somewhere along the line in the last month Gemma has become a bean. Similar to a jelly bean, a Gemma bean is small and sweet. I don't know where it came from, but now I can't stop saying "Gemma bean, Josephine, I love you!"

Gemma is racing through milestones and I can't hardly keep up with both the online scrabble game I play with my mom and posting here what the bean is up to.

Before Christmas:
Pulled self up to knees
Crawled on all fours, left the army crawl behind for the bugger, better mode of transportation
Cheerios to mouth accuracy calculated to be precisely 9%
Started on baby purée foods, eating took along time. Getting her to open up was sometimes challenging and I felt like she just didn't quite get it.

2 days before we left for Christmas with the family, Gemma mastered the crawl to sitting move and from sitting to crawling became more graceful. ( previous method started from a sitting position and found catapulting herself forward which resulted in her face planting and then crawling)

Over Christmas, Gemma learned:
To pull herself to a full stand. Most pictures of her will now include at least 3 bumps/scrapes/bruises/injury to the head of some kind for at least the next 12 months.

Increases her Cheerios accuracy to 64%, and increased speed a great deal.

Waves hi using 1) a karate chop 2) open close motion of one hand. Both are accompanied by an adorable grin. If you wave and say hi back, she usually giggles like crazy. It's fun to communicate!

In the same vein, she also will mimic clapping if she sees one of us doing it.

Became more comfortable with purées and opens mouth like a baby bird

Tried a multitude of new foods, some of them on purpose: pears, peas, English muffin, Olive Garden breadsticks, pizza crust, ice cream, snicker doodle cookies, saltine crackers, and lots of wrapping paper. No wonder she quit sleeping through the night! Keep in mind, most foods she either got a tiny taste or extremely small quantities, but enough to give it a try. Overall, she appears to still prefer carrots over almost everything else.

Sent from my iPhone