20 Months Old

I don't have any super recent pics of Jenna, but she is now 20 months old! Since I'm so far behind in blogging I'm just going to try doing a quick developmental update on her for my own records (and because of my lack of memory). By the way, Trevor took both these pictures and I was impressed considering he's only 3 1/2 (as he says).

Jenna began walking at about 17 1/2 months old. She was able to take a single step (using only one foot, not both) right about 17 months, but one day when we had some friends over she suddenly walked about 6 steps (May 11, 2011)! I was so shocked and happy that I burst out crying. I knew she'd walk one day, but it had taken so much work (on her part) to get there that actually seeing it was incredibly emotional for me. About a month later she was released from physical therapy! We are so thankful for Early Intervention and cannot stress enough how amazing they've been to work with. I highly recommend anyone who is concerned about their child's development to call them! They work with kids under age 2 and everything is paid on a very realistic sliding scale. Back to her gross motor skills. . . she still isn't jumping yet, but she loves to dance, sway, and climb! This girl can now easily climb onto chairs and get on the table. Thankfully, she's learned that's a no-no, but she'll still climb on anything she can reach. She's recently learned how to get up Trevor's step stool (only about a food off the ground), and will proudly climb up and then stand on it looking around waiting for someone to praise her. She also climbs up steps (holding a rail) on her feet instead of her knees now and can climb down stairs going backwards on her belly as well as forwards sliding on her bottom.

Her fine motor skills are still a little behind, but not delayed. She's working on feeding herself with a spoon (and it's a fun thing to watch!), but will usually just pick up the bowl or plate and lick try to suck out whatever is in/on it.

She's still having feeding therapy, but has come so far! She only lacks two major skills now - she doesn't lick (thus the sucking of yogurt out of a bowl instead of licking it), and she can't bite through a small baby carrot yet. She can, however, gnaw it and does quite happily. She finally figured out how to drink from a cup right around 14 1/2 months and can now drink from almost any type of cup (sippy or straw), but still has trouble with a skinny straw like the ones used with a juice box.

She also has speech therapy twice a month. Once a month she has speech/feeding combined and once is only speech. She's really coming along in vocalizing things and tries so hard to communicate what she wants, but most of what she says isn't really understandable by most other people. Some of her favorite things to say are papi (paci), hi (hi), gye (bye), mommy, daddy, and bubby (what she called Trevor), ba (ball), ga-g00 (thank you), and she makes many sounds (elephant, dog, cat, car, train, a roar for various predators). Her therapist said she's really good at watching lips and trying to copy the mouth movements which is a good thing.

Jenna Boo still loves her brother and will yell "Bubbyyyyyy" around the house looking for him. This morning he was in time-out in his room yelling, "Jenna, save me!" and she was excitedly respond with "Buuubyyyy!" and point to his room. When his time out was over she ran in there and gave him a big hug. They love each other so much!