May I have a word please?

Or, well, two actually.

Ella now has two verbalized words! She's finally speaking!

Her first word is "buhbuh", for bubble. Her second word is her own name, Ella, although it sometimes comes out "eya" or "lala". This is a very good thing, and on top of it, Ella has been engaging in a fair amount of imitative behavior lately, which hopefully means we'll be able to teach her more.

We're not really sure what has brought all this progress on, it could be that she was just ready, or it could be some of the changes we've made lately in therapy or diet. But whatever it is, we're going to keep doing it.

One thing we changed in mid June was we started giving Ella a highly purified cod liver oil supplement. Admittedly the best study (Oxford-Durham) I previously found suggested there are no motor benefits, only behavioral. However at least one study that wasn't as well controlled (Stordy 1997, summarized by Richardson) suggests significant motor benefits.

Thus far we've been keeping the dose low, 1/4 tsp a day providing 155mg DHA, and 102mg EPA. Cod liver oil can cause problems with too much Vitamin A, but this dosage is under 20% of her daily vitamin A and has only traces of Vitamin D. Needless to say, it certainly doesn't seem to be hurting, and differs from most of the Omega3's Ella's gotten so far in popular supplemented kids foods which tend to only contain DHA.