10 months, 1 week, 1 day. A pro at Independent Play!

Amelia just loves to sit and play. Since she is over 10 months old and still not crawling, I've had to train myself to let her just be on the floor.

She will sit and play with her toys for pretty long periods of time without fussing. She has one of those play gyms and I keep all the living room toys on it in a great big pile. I set her in front of it and she just "goes to town". Soon into playing she'll go for things just out of her reach and roll onto her side. This usually results in a series of rolls and reaches. As a result, she's also gotten better at pushing herself up from the floor so she can see around as much as she likes. She'll get a little frustrated if she can't get the item but then will become distracted by another toy and will play with it for a while.

My friend Mary recommended putting her on all fours and rocking her a little to get her used to being in that position. Since doing that, Amelia will go from a sitting position to an almost-crawling position. She is also starting to scoot backwards! (Hey, it's progress.)

She has long been able to use her feet to brings things closer to her. She also is good at figuring out how to drag a blanket towards her if it has something on it she wants. She is really pretty smart - we think! She apparently can also use those feet to scoot - as her daddy noticed a got a few days ago. We were on vacation visiting Uncle Stephen, Aunt Jennifer and cousin Austin. We finished our visit and left their house for the somewhat long drive towards the airport. We stopped at a Subway for lunch and there were no high chairs. So we sat at a clean table and I set her up on the table - the window was at her back and we each had an arm near her so she was safe. She was sitting there, having a grand time. She got ahold of two napkins and just started waving them like she was on the tarmac at the airport. David then realized she was awfully close to his chips - and he hadn't moved his chips!

Another thing she does which I just love is strain her neck to see something she's interested in. Her eyes get a bit rounder, her mouth is set in a serious closed position, and you can just tell she's trying to figure out whatever it is she sees. Like this morning in the church nursery there was a little boy who had a truck and was pushing it around on the floor while she was in the exersaucer. Once he started doing that, he had her full attention and when he went out of sight around a chair, she craned as much as she could to see where he went.

She's taking a break from all that play right now and is napping in her crib.

[photo dated 7/24/06]