Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but life has been a bit busy, and a lot of Ella's progress has been evolutionary, not revolutionary.

On the speech front, we've seen a lot of little things, but there is real progress there. For example her "no" is cleaned up to a point where most people can understand it, as opposed to the broken "nah ooh" (pronounced as two separate words) that she started with. She is also using a crude "yeah" (eYah!), which is good because she can now answer yes and no questions verbally (this is quite handy when driving... quickly glancing in the mirror at a light to read ASL signs is not exactly efficient.) She's also picked up a few more word approximations and is saying things like "I Wah mo ". She's also gotten a lot more willing to make a real effort at pronouncing new words.

On the motor front, her climbing ability (and confidence to try) is vastly improved. She's now handling moderately complex playground obstacles like rope suspended bridges, rope ladders, vertical ladders of a few rungs, etc. She still doesn't have quite the agility of the average child her age, but she's definitely making good progress in motor skills.

When it comes to food, she's recently gotten out of her absolute refusal to try new foods. She's now eating some soft bread products (not just crackers/cereal), and even eating burgers (with the bun).

We've also got a planning meeting coming up in about two weeks for next year's schooling. I'll definitely have more to post about after that.

Speech, Ella's way...

Ella continues to make good leaps and bounds lately, as we've seen ever since Ella got her glasses. She's speaking more and her motor skills are making good progress.

On the gross motor front, Ella's learned to make small forward jumps in order to hop her way across the floor. Previously she'd only been jumping straight up-and-down. This is good because it takes a lot more confidence and balance skill to jump forward than it does to jump in place. Her climbing is getting a lot better, but she's still behind in this area, but that will come in time with better balance.

Speech-wise, Ella is now up to using a total of 8-12 spoken words and word approximations, which vocabulary wise is more on par with a 16-month old than a 3.75 year old. Her diction is also pretty crude, again like the younger child.

However, one interesting twist is that Ella is already putting these together to make sentences, and also combining them with ASL signs. This is very amusing, because usually children with such a limited vocabulary only use single words. Hearing Ella very roughly say "Hep Meh" (help me) is an interesting contrast. Her speech ability is really basic, but it contrasts with her more comparatively advanced conceptual language abilities.

Of course, we're used to out-of-order development but it continues to amuse me.

catching the blog up...

Ok, first a little oldish news that I haven't relayed to the blog:

At a meeting with Ella's OT, she suggested that Ella may have depth perception issues, and we might want to take her to a developmental optometrist. We took that as good advice and the results were that Ella is severely farsighted (+7.5 d), and can't focus on things close to her. As a "stepping stone" the optometrist suggested getting glasses at +6.5 see how she does with them, and visit for a follow-up (which is coming up in a week or 2 now).

Now for the rest:

Since getting the glasses, Ella has greatly improved in several areas, particularly in motor ability. The ability to focus on things close to her has given her a better ability to traverse stairs, jump, and the confidence to run around. Her general activity level is also up quite a bit. It has also increased her attention span for hands-on activities etc. We also expect this will have a positive impact on her speech, as she'll be able to see the details of how we move our mouths and tongues while speaking. She still has some motor obstacles to speech (i.e.: she cannot curl her tongue upwards yet), but the glasses at least remove one obstacle.

Of course, we recently had her mid-term IEP meeting with her teachers, where we plan her education goals, therapy levels, etc. Unfortunately, all of the review was written before her glasses arrived, and some of her goals are likely to be rather low now that she can see better. On the upside, we've got another meeting to discuss summer semester soon, and her teacher mentioned we may amend her IEP at that meeting if needed.

brief news bits..

Just a little quickie here:

Ella's been sick for the past week or so with bronchitis. However, she's finishing up a course of antibiotics, and it is clearing out now.

Ella also seems to be working on a speech approximation for "bye bye", although at this point it is little more than "buh buh". On the plus side, she's continuing with the use of ma ma, da da, and og (frog). She also frequently uses a spoken "I" mixed into her signs, and very rarely she says "Hi". All of this is really good news, as it means her spoken vocabulary is growing. In the past we've seen patterns where a new sound replaces an old one.

Ella has also taken to a lot of play activities that are good for balance and strength. Lots of jumping, bouncing, crab walking, etc. She's even starting to work on a broad jump, not just a vertical hop (I think this is her teachers in action, but I have not directly asked them).

Oh the many sundry things..

It's been a long time since I've updated how Ella's doing, so here's some quick general bits..

Talking - Ella now occasionally uses a few crudely formed words with purpose. However, she's more inclined to use them as general bables than with any purpose. The most notable exception to this is saying "I" in the middle of signing "may I be excused".

Eating - Ella is doing really good with self feeding, and can now spoon her own cereal out of a bowl. She'll also pick up and bite chunks out of food that she strongly likes, such as fries and nuggets, although less favored foods still need to be cut up for her.

Motor - Ella's gotten pretty good at jumping (over, and over and over again) in-place in little short hops, and getting on and off her tricycle. Her motor is generally doing pretty good, although she is a little bit behind her peers in more ambitious climbing and balance adventures.

School - Ella went back school this past Thursday. She's now in a preschool class instead of a toddler class (higher age group) and is now in a regular early-childhood special ed program, not a MINC (higher development level). The later means that she's not with any of her former classmates, which is unfortunate, but she's doing fine with it.

Potty - Well, we're still working on this one. Ella does pretty well at using the potty, but her enthusiasm for wearing underwear instead of diapers varies wildly (often very resistant to wearing one or the other, usually wanting the exact opposite of what works for the planned day)

Anyway, hope you're all well, I just wanted to get a quick update of how things are going.

We have jumping!

This morning Ella jumped for the first time, or at least for the first time with enough vigor to get her feet off the floor. She's been doing a lot of "bouncing" lately, making jumping movements without her feet going anywhere. I guess she was scared of falling and finally got the guts up to try doing it hard enough to actually jump.

This is a good thing, as it shows her gross motor progress is catching up. She's 34 months old now, and jumping is a milestone for 30 months on most charts I've seen. While she's mostly been in the 7-9 month range, this item is only 4 months behind.

Go Ella Go! :)

Still More motor progress

(ok, this is getting wierd. I swear I published this this earlier this morning.)

Ella's been continuing with more challenging motor tasks. This evening she climbed up a low slide by herself (on the slide part, not the stairs).

In the speech department we're still mostly vowel sounds, "du" "ga" and "tooka", with the occasional "ba" "pa" or "ma" tossed in. However, she's getting more free about echoing sounds back to you.

More motor progress

This was supposed to be published back on the evening of Sunday the 19th, but for some reason I hit save instead of publish. Ooops.

Well, part motor, part self confidence. Regardless, this weekend we managed to get Ella to do several new gross-motor and balance things we've been trying to get her to do for a while.

First, she stepped over the timbers surrounding the mulch at the nearby tot-lot. The timbers are small, onlt 4" wide, and only sticking up 2" from the ground. However, up until yesterday we'd been unable to get her to take a step over them without holding an adults hand (often making a grossly over-large step and unbalancing herself). Both yesterday and today she stepped over without any help, and kept her balance, with only slight hesitation.

We also got her to run around in our yard without help. Our yard slopes gently, and while we could get her to go across the slope, or up it, she would not even walk down it without holding hands. We had a grilling party yesterday, and towards the end we went and played in the yard. We were mostly playing a game where I'd run away, then sit down and wait for Ella to come tackle us. We had her running all over the yard, uphill, downhill, in circles, whatever, without any problem or hesitation.

I also took her to the "big playground" yesterday, and she actually completed several circuits using the low slide of the gym without any help. She climbed up the steps, across a platform, got on the slide, slid herself down, got off, and ran over to the steps and repeated it all.

I was also impressed with one of her feats of fine motor skill. One of our friends brought over a stomp rocket (link has best picture I could find) and she was readily able to thread the rocket onto the black launch tube (these fit fairly snug), and she was doing it holding the rocket at the middle and the pad was just sitting on the ground. We might have to get one of those (or a jr version) as the stomping part may improve her ballance.

Anyway, hope you're all well.

Going to school...

Whew, it has, once again, been a while since I've posted.

Recently it has been time for Ella's progress to be formally reviewed by her therapists, and to revise her education plan. So there's been lots of meetings, testing, planning, etc going on.

As a summary of her evaluation, Ella is more-or-less in the same relative place she was last time she got evaluated. Her motor skills are 7-9 months behind where they "should" be, which is roughly how far behind they were before. Of course, she's older now so that's less of a percentage than before. She is most severely behind in expressive communication skills, as she's still not speaking on any consistent basis. Here she's behind by approximately 18 months, and although that doesn't count her signing, she's still behind even if you were to count them.

And of course, all that evaluation has led to a new education plan for Ella. Currently Ella is in a home based therapy arrangement, where the therapists come to our home for one-on-one sessions with Ella. The plan now is to transition Ella into a group therapy arrangement at a school. This would normally happen anyway when she turns three, but we're doing it a tad bit early. The basic thinking here is the increased exposure to peers will help her model off others, and that's a philosophy that makes sense to both of us as parents.

So, starting in two weeks, Ella is going to be going to a local elementary school for a class called MINC-T (multiple intense needs class - toddler). She'll be going 5 days a week for 2 and a half hours a day. We've already had a chance to go to the school, visit the classroom, meet the teacher, therapists, and most of her fellow students and their parents. So far I'm reasonably impressed with everything.

At any rate, it's getting late (or early) and I best be off to bed.

General misc news..

Sorry I haven't posted lately, but with the holidays and all, a lot was going on.

Regardless, on the Ella front the news is mostly small things.

She had a wonderful holiday, and particularly loved the tree. Every morning she'd come out and sign tree, then star. After we took it down, she would ask about it for several days by signing tree.

In the progress department, her signing continues to progress. She's now up to 90 signs, and we're working on colors. At this point, a lot of her signs are distorted to be similar to others she already knows, but in context we can figure them out quickly enough.

Recently she's been on an upswing of babbling again, which is good. She'd slid off her speaking for a while there, devolving at one point to everything being "rah-rah". It's good that the variety of sounds is back again, but this still remains an area of concern for us.

She's also starting to make "play noises", such as "num num num" when pretending to eat off a spoon, and making slurping noises while pretending to drink. This is also a good thing, as it's using a vocalization for a specific purpose, and provides some foundation for us to build on while working on speech.

Gross motor wise I've been off-and-on working with her to try teach her how to jump. I've managed to get her up off her heels, but no real off-the-ground jumping yet. It's more like standing up really fast at this point. Other than that she's doing very well motor wise. I don't know if these have been mentioned before, but she climbs on and off of the couch without any help, crouches down to pick things up without difficulty, etc. I'm overall quite pleased with her gross motor progress.

Anyway, take care all, and I hope your holidays were as bright as ours

A quick update...

Ok, it's been *way* too long.. sometimes life just gets busy..

In any event, the three of us have been fighting colds for the past week or two. At this point Ella's pretty much over it, and me and mentalmother are on the down-swing of it.

In other recent progress, Ella started standing up on her own, without using anything to pull up on, a little over a week ago. At first it was rare unless you specifically asked her to do it, but she's now doing it quite regularly on her own as a way to get up to standing. Previously she'd have to crawl over to something to hold onto to either pull (tall item) or push (short item) up on.

She's also continuing to develop her signs, and they're now coming fast enough I'm sure I've missed documenting some of them. But she's up to 52 I've documented, and who knows how many more she has. Back in august she had 15 that I posted as a list. Here's her current signs, in more-or-less the order she learned them:

Eat, More, Milk, Light, finished, Dog, Open, Book, Shoes, Daddy,Music, Hug, bird, Drink, cracker, cereal, play, cheese, on ,wash hands, brush teeth, potty, please, sorry, cookie, bath, flower, thank you, time (used to request signing time videos), swing, tree, grapes, slow, car, motorcycle, clothes, silly, rock, game, train, boat, ice cream, socks, cold, like, blanket, hat, excused, break (this one she invented her own sign, and was not taught the ASL version), bed, baby.

That's not a huge vocabulary, but it's enough to express a lot of basic needs and interests.

Anyway, I best get some sleep. Hope you're all well.

More walking, signs, etc.

First, a brief progress update.

Ella walked on her own in the yard for the first time today. She struggled a bit walking up the gentle slope, but seemed to enjoy it.

She also used a new sign today, completely without prompting. I was feeding her lunch, and I started off with a few cracker pieces. After those were gone I gave her veggies, cheese, grapes, etc. About halfway through all this, she spontaneously signed "cracker" at me, not quite perfectly, but quite close. So, I gave her more crackers, showed her the correct sign and she echoed it properly while chewing away happily.

After that was gone, I asked her if she wanted "more cracker", and she signed both words at me. This is the first time Ella's used a two-word phrase.

Not bad for one day.

Finally, something unrelated to Ella but made a rather odd twist to my day

If you encounter one of these (saddleback) caterpillars, don't touch it. I brushed against one today and I can tell you first hand they hurt quite a bit. Very much like a good solid bee sting where they've had time to inject lots of venom. I used the scotch tape trick, washed, and used meat tenderizer to extract the venom. After all that my arm hurt for about 4 hours, and still has a mild tingling sensation 8 hours later.

Leave it to me to find a caterpillar that actually has venomous stings. Apparently that one is quite potent as stinging catepillars go, but there's one that's clearly more potent (the puss caterpillar, and it can be found in Maryland too.)

Distance record...

Well, Ella set a new distance record today. Twice today she walked from our bedroom to our kitchen without touching anything, about 48 feet, and also did a similar distance at the food court.

Go Ella go!

More walking..

In the past week or so Ella has continued to become more outgoing about walking and demonstrating more skill at it than ever before. This is good because for a while she had regressed, at least in what she was willing to do, but as of today she matched her previous distance record. (down the hallway and around the corner to the bathroom, which she last did mid march)

She's now walking without merely concentrating on where she's going and quickly walking there. Instead she's looking around or down at her feet, playing with her hands, etc. She's also picked up the cute habit of walking around with her hands clasped behind her back. I need to get a photo of this because it really is very cute :-)

She's also doing a lot of turning without touching things. When she's walking back and forth between me and Karla, more than half the time she'll come up to you and without touching you (or just poking you on the nose with her fingertip) she'll turn around and head back to the other parent. I can also get her to follow me around corners without touching the walls, at least some of the time.

Recent progress, more walking/babling.

Ok, I've been *really* busy lately, but I really feel bad about not blogging lately.

In any event, Ella is continuing to progress albeit at her own pace.

In the walking department, Ella is starting to show more bravery about walking on her own. She's still not fully walking independently, but without hesitation she'll take 6' "jumps" between objects. She also tends to not be constantly touching things when walking along them, instead walking with a hand hovering near things, but not on them. Our current gross motor work is focused on developing the ability to stand up in the middle of the floor, and improving her climbing.

In the speech department, Ella has been starting to use vocal sounds in relation to items, like "buh" in relation to bubbles. She doesn't do it all the time, but we do see it occasionally.

In any event, we've got a lot of preparation to do for the weekend, so I best head to work so I can head home sooner.

Progress, etc..

First, sorry it's been forever since I've posted. Ella's been continuing to make progress, but it's lots of smaller things, with no "big items" since my last posting.

First, her special educator has shifted our activities towards increasing Ella's sensory stimulation. This tactic has been fairly successful. In the past, Ella alternated between making progress in motor and communication, completely stalling progress in one while progressing in the other. With the stimulation exercises, she seems to be progressing in both at the same time.

On the motor front, Ella has progressed in skill, but her courage levels have devolved a bit. Her maximum walking distance is much shorter than it was, only 5 feet or so between parents. However her skills are increasing. She's now readily getting herself down from standing onto her hands-and-feet using inanimate objects to brace herself with one hand. She's also fairly regularly letting go with both hands to play with toys while she stands.

However, she's still not willing to stand without being near a hand-hold, and she's not walking around freely yet.

On the communication front, her sign vocabulary is continuing to grow. She's got 5 signs she uses regularly, and is "close" on another 3 or 4. Her babbling is increasing constantly, but she doesn't yet use any of it with apparent intent.

Anyway, I hope you're all well, and I'll hopefully post again soon.

pinball walking....

Ok, so last night I had a big update on Ella's walking progress from Sunday night. This morning I got to see another.

Ella is now "pinballing", free walking back and forth between multiple different pieces of furniture, all in rapid succession with little hesitation. From the chair to the couch, from the couch to the ottocube, to the loveseat, couch, chair, tv, ottocube.. boing, boing, boing..

It's all very cool to watch, and she finds it very enjoyable.

Now we've still got plenty of gross-motor skills to to work on, but this is great progress. She still needs to work on stopping, standing around and starting again. She can already do this, but it is really the rare "I got distracted" thing, not something she'd do intentionally.

More walking updates...

Sunday night me and Karla did more "walking practice" aka "baby tennis" with Ella. This is our usual bit where we sit 5 to 10 feet apart, then have Ella walk back and forth between us.

Sunday I tried something a little different. While Ella was coming down the hall at me, I scootched across the floor so that I was around the corner from her. And to my surprise, she rounded the corner just fine and got me. After a few passes of this, I was able to let Ella go at the bathroom, and she'd take off and round the corner heading for mom without even being able to see her when she took off. For us that's a major advancement in walking bravery, which is very important as her primary obstacle to walking seems to be fear of falling or taking chances.


Her total trip was 16 feet, 5 1/2 feet from the bathroom to the corner and another 9 1/2 feet from the corner to mom. So it's also a new distance record.

We were not able to get her to make the return trip blind. I had to lean my head out around the corner to get her to take off, but it's still a major advancement. With a few more goes at it, I'm sure we can get it going.

Unfortunately, we didn't get any walking practice today, I had to head to work in a hurry when I woke up at 8 this morning, and worked past Ella's bedtime. Hopefully we'll get some in tomorrow morning.

Stair Climbing/crawling..

Our home has no stairs in it, so Ella gets little exposure to them other than concrete steps outside. So, normally she's only given the opportunity to practice walking up them.

Today we were over visiting the 3 B's and Ella successfully crawled up a short 3 step staircase without any help. Generally speaking that's no major achievement, but it was also the first time she'd ever had a chance to try :)

Also, while she was walking around between adults she did a really nice change of direction. She managed to stop, turn 90 degrees, and start going again without wiping out. While it wasn't the most graceful maneuver, it was impressive none the less. In the past she's managed to stop and resume, and she's managed to turn while walking, but she's never turned in place before.

All in all it was a lot of fun, and only mildly chaotic.

Ok, make it 10 feet...

Tonight Ella was in a braver mood, and did 10 feet (17 steps) of free walking, shattering this morning's 7 foot record. And she did it repeatedly, at least 5 round-trip laps.

One other thing I neglected to mention.. She steers herself while walking. She might start off headed at a 45 degree angle to where she's going, and she'll properly curve to get where she wants to go.

This is all very good.