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.)