Christian music great Amy Grant rang in the new year with the birth of a granddaughter, Penelope Willow Long.
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Baby Penelope is the first child of one of Grant's daughters, the former Millie Chapman, and her husband Ben.
"What a way to kick off 2022!," the new grandmother told People. "We are over the moon at her safe delivery. Mom and baby are doing great!"
People adds that Penelope was born on Monday (Jan. 3) at 10:14 a.m. in Nashville. She weighed 7 lbs., 12 oz., and measured 20 inches at birth.
Millie, a daughter of Grant and her ex Gary Chapman, was the inspiration for her mother's breakthrough crossover hit, 1991's "Baby Baby."
"It is hard to believe that same 6-week-old girl who inspired the lyrics to 'Baby Baby' is now a beautiful married woman," Grant told People following her daughter's 2019 wedding. "Her life has given us a lot of reasons to dance and celebrate through the years!"
Penelope Willow comes from a list of her parents' favorite baby names.
"They weren't family names but they are now," Millie told People.
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Millie made headlines in 2017 when she donated a kidney to a childhood friend. While in the hospital waiting room, Grant and her second husband, Country Music Hall of Famer Vince Gill, mended fences with Gary Chapman and his wife Cassie.
"In the wake of a loving gift, we all came together to do our hospital vigil and it was a lot of waiting, but so much joy," Grant told the Tennessean. "It's been unbelievable, sitting around talking, looking at old family pictures."
Grant's been shaping the course of modern gospel music ever since she was a Nashville-based teenage recording artist in the '70s. She's since fortified her reputation as a wordsmith with Michael W. Smith co-write "Place in This World" and contemporary holiday standard "[Tender] Tennessee Christmas."
