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).

Tech-speak device and speech news.

Again, I'm a bit behind in updating the blog, but the holidays always make life a bit busy. So, with that asside, here's a quick update of what's been going on.

First, Ella's school has sent home a Tech/Speak device. This is essentially a board of buttons with pictures on them, and when Ella pushes the buttons, it speaks words. The hope is that it will make her realize that spoken-word can help her communicate with more people, thus encourage her to work on transitioning from signing to speaking.

As for speech, Ella's had a few new words/word aproximations emerge over the holiday. In addition to "da da" and "og" (frog), she's now using "ma ma" (which she had a long time ago, but disappeared for a year), and "ah ah ooh" (uh-oh). What seems most positive to me is she very quickly started using these words appropriately, because she already has the concepts of how to use language down from her signing. This makes me very hopeful that once we can break through the physical co-ordination of her mouth, she'll fall rapidly into speaking.

In any event, we all had a great Thanksgiving, and I hope you all did too.

Ella's follow-up appointment.

This is a bit of old news now, but I'm just now getting around to blogging it. Back on Nov 5th, Ella had her post-op follow-up at Hopkins. They performed a fairly detailed check-up of her heart, and the placement of the device using both echo- and electro-cardiograms. The Amplatzer duct occluder is in-place, it's not moving, and it's not obstructing normal blood flow anywhere. To quote the cardiologist that did the procedure "It's hers now, she can keep it."

At this point, we've been given some very minor restrictions (i.e.: no dental work for 4-5 months due to infection risks.) and we're scheduled to follow-up with our local cardiologist in a year.

In general Ella has been doing really well. The day after the procedure (Thursday) she was still pretty sleepy, but she went back to school the day after that (Friday), and had a more-or-less normal day. She had some minor tenderness for a bit over a week at her hip where they inserted the catheters, but this went really well.

All is well.

Just to let everyone know, Ella is home and doing very well. She's got a good appetite, when we got home last night she immediately spotted a bowl of goldfish crackers, walked over and stuffed a handful in her mouth. She's been sleeping a lot, but when she's up and about she is acting like her usual happy self. She doesn't seem to be in any serious pain, but was a bit fussy about me changing her bandages this morning. Even that was a fairly mild protest; she was whining about it, not crying or screaming.

At this point, I expect she'll be OK to go to school on Friday, although you never know for sure.

Ok so we are going home

Things went well and the doctor has decided not to keep ella overnight


-- Posted from my iPhone

Proceedure done

The proceedure is done and went very well. Still not positive she will stay overnight, but it is likely.


-- Posted from my iPhone

They are using the amplatzer

They have decided to use an amplatzer, which is the larger device and Ella will likely be staying overnight


-- Posted from my iPhone

The are starting

Ella is fully under and the catheters are in place. Next step they will inject dye into her heart and take xrays to measure the pda and determine what device to use. This will take about 1 hour.

-- Posted from my iPhone

Waiting waiting waiting

We are now waiting arround the lobby. The nurse will call us 3 times with status updates as they proceed. I'll be posting those as they come.


-- Posted from my iPhone

In anesthesia

Ella is currently in anesthesia. She is only mildly sedated and will be slowly taken deeper over the next hour or so.

-- Posted from my iPhone

On our way.

We are on our way to the hospital. Assuming pre-op doesn't show she is getting sick, the heart proceedure will be today.


-- Posted from my iPhone

Surgery on for Weds.

As of this morning Ella is healthy and not sick in any way, so we have begun her pre-op asprin therapy (as directed by her surgeon). Assuming she stays cold-free we'll be on for Weds am.

I am also testing the Iphone app I'll be using to post from the hospital.


-- Posted from my iPhone

Surgery delay, potty training, and general updates..

Ok, first, Ella's surgery (that was supposed to go off last Weds) got rescheduled for October. Earlier last week she came down with a cold, and that added unnecessary risk to the surgery. (mostly because they need to put a tube in her throat during the procedure, and that doesn't mix so well with coughs and inflamed throats).

On the progress front, this weekend Ella spent all of her awake time in regular underwear, and had no accidents all weekend! She's actually very happy to be in underwear now, so it looks we're breaking through the PT barrier that the flu put in our way last winter. (we almost had her daytime PTed, but then a flu or flu-like illness struck, and Ella became afraid of underwear.)

On the speech front, Ella continues to chatter babbles at us, and continues to be quite prolific in it. She'll now say "I" and "Hi", although the distinction between the two is blurred. She'll also occasionally form "Doga" for Dog. Her babbles include "Da", "Dooga", "Tka/Tooka", "Ga", "Ra", "P", "Ba", "Ha", along with all (or nearly all...) the vowel sounds.

Anyway, just wanted to get a little news up on the blog, hope you're all well!

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.

Heart procedure - scheduled for Sept.

MentalMother, in a bit of role reversal, posted a very lengthy and detailed description of all this, so to continue the reversal, I'm going to post a brief note.

Ella is now scheduled for a procedure to correct her PDA. As heart procedures go, this is a relatively minor one, and overall is similar to the way they put in stents for heart disease, but this is closing an artery near the heart rather than opening one.

The whole thing will take place as a non-surgical cardiac catheterization type of procedure on September 16th. She will be under general anesthesia for this (good luck getting a 3 year old to lay still on a table for 3 hours, much less while poking around the heart!). During the procedure they will perform some detailed x-rays with contrast enhancers, and decide what size or type of device to place in her heart to close the ductus. If the ductus is small enough, they will use an embolyzation coil to close it, in which case she will likely go home late the same day as an outpatient. If it is larger they will use an Amplatzer duct occluder, in which case she will say overnight for observation. (note: neat videos on the Amplatzer).

Either way she should be back in action after a couple of days.

Overall, it's good news for us that we can use the catheter procedure, as this eliminates the potential need for conventional heart surgery.

Eating progress..

Recently, we've had some progress getting Ella to eat new foods. A lot of this has just been overcoming her toddler instinct to reject any food that is unfamiliar to her, which is pretty typical at her age.

However, some of this is due to her texture aversions. Ella really doesn't like to eat bread products very much, but recently she's started eating sandwiches if they're cut up and put on a fork. Her teachers have a theory that the texture aversion is actually not liking the rough feel of bread against her lips, which is what lead them to try putting it on a fork. This weekend, I took that a bit further, and got her to eat the top of a corn muffin by breaking it up into pieces she could pick up and stuff in her mouth.

yay for new frontiers in cuisine for Ella!

Cardiologist results..

As her mother already mentioned, Ella visited the cardiologist today.

Again they did an EKG (which she screamed at me through because she did not want to lay still) and an echocardiogram (which she was fairly good for). The results are fairly good, or at least as expected. (edit - fixed electrocardiogram to echocardiogram)

Her PDA is still present, but her left ventricle is now a tiny bit enlarged, but there is no damage to her heart or lungs. The enlargement is too slight to be harmful anytime soon, but it is a sign she's going to need a procedure to close the PDA at some point. We've been referred to the doctor that performs the cauterization, and he'll take a look at her. If he deems she's a good candidate for the catheter procedure, she'll have it this year, or the next, depending on how he feels about her size. If she's for some unusual reason not a good candidate, she'll have conventional surgery sometime this year.

This is all pretty much what we expected based on last year's visit.

Anyway, just wanted to share the news that Ella's still doing OK, but will be getting a procedure sometime in the next 18 months or so.

signs and a heart full of love.

I've updated Ella's list of sign language signs (google docs link in links section), and we're now up to 141 signs that I've documented. She's also getting pretty reasonable at 2 new colors, black and brown.

Also this Wednesday, Ella has a cardiologist visit to check on her PDA, and to see if she's going to need a corrective procedure for that. Last time she saw the cardiologist, they told us it was likely to be necessary at some point, but it wasn't anything significant, but that was a year ago. Fortunately it is likely to be a catheter procedure, not a surgical one, if it is necessary at all.

Regardless, wish us luck.

moving up from the MINC program...

Originally it was a judgment call between putting Ella into a MINC-T (multiple intense needs class for toddlers), or putting her into the normal special ed toddler class. Ultimately, the MINC was chosen to afford Ella extra therapy time, and a smaller class for her first school.

Recently, the paperwork was done for Ella's school starting this fall. For age reasons, she's going to be moving from toddler class to preschool class. Given how well she's been doing in the classroom, and how well she socializes with other children, the staff recommended that Ella move up from the MINC program to the normal special ed preschool. We've decided to go ahead and do that.

This does mean Ella's one-on-one time with school therapists will be going down, but it also means the class activities will be more challenging for Ella, and provide her with better opportunities to advance on her own or from her peers. With her current progress in motor and social areas, I think this is very important. She's also been babbling back-and-forth with her peers, and this class is also likely to have more students in it for Ella to "talk" to.

This isn't terribly fresh news, as we've known about it for a while, but the paperwork was finalized this past week, so I figured it's past due to put it up on the blog.

Go Ella Go!

Blowing bubbles..

After recently figuring out how to purse her lips to blow on things with a focused stream (instead of just going "Ha" at them) over the weekend, on Tuesday Ella figured out how to use this skill to dip a bubble wand, pull it out and blow bubbles.

It's not a huge step, but it's progress in her oral motor skills, and her application of them. Since that's an area where she's been progressing very slowly, this makes me very happy.

slow but steady progress

I haven't posted in a while, mostly because nothing "unusually exciting" has happened with Ella lately.

Of course there's lots of small cute things she does every day, and perhaps I should make a point to post more of those. Thinking of that, here's one now:

A couple of nights ago, when Ella got in bed after her bath, she started giggling and shaking her head all over the place while laying down. This, of course, made a giant mess of her freshly combed hair, and I commented "Oh, you're going to be fuzzy tomorrow". She immediately stopped, looked at me, and started stroking my beard. "Yes, fuzzy, like daddy's beard". It was immensely cute.

As for progress, Color wise, Ella's starting to get the hang of identifying and signing black and brown, although these are still a bit rough and she'll sometimes label black things as being brown.

Motor wise, Ella's continuing to get more confident and bold climbing on play structures, stepping over things, jumping, etc. It's all very gradual, but looking back at even a month ago, her ability to navigate barriers is much smoother now.

On the speech front, Ella's continuing to babble, and it's still mostly "Da". However we are starting to get her to vary the sounds a bit. She's sometimes distinguishing vowel sounds to make word approximations. Most of the time it's all just "da" or "da da", but sometimes she'll intentionally shift towards "eh-da!" (ella), "die" (bye), and rarely she'll even make a little twist towards "Dahn" (done) although it's still more like "Dahd".

We've also recently seen a return of B and R sounds, although these are rare just like "tooka" "Ha" and "Ga" are.

At any rate, I hope you all are well! Hope to see you all soon.

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! :)

Now I'm sick.. yay :)

Well, Ella is pretty much clear of whatever was bothering her. She's got a slight cough now, but it's not terribly persistent.

However, now I've got some kind of head cold with a mildly elevated temperature. It's not so bad, but it's never fun having a cold.

Anyway, hope you're all well!

Something Ella is ahead in..

Much of the time, I discuss area's ella is behind in. Well, for once, I'd like to mention one she's ahead in.

Colors.

Ella has been obsessed with colors since she was around 24 months old. She's gone through phases of forcing us to work with her book of colors a dozen or more times a day, every day, for weeks straight. Around 27 months or so she started being somewhat accurate at picking out objects of a requested color, at least for red, blue, and green. (Ella, which ball is green? ) At the time, this was largely dismissed as highly unlikely by her special educator.

By 31 months, she could identify red, blue and green objects, and label them expressively with signs. ( Ella, what color is this? )

Ella is currently just under 34 months old, and she can reliably identify and label the colors: red, blue, green, and orange, and usually nails yellow too (sometimes she calls it orange). She can sign brown, but is a bit shaky on identifying objects as being brown. She can also reliably identify purple objects on request, but cannot form the sign.

As milestones go, they say most children should be able to label 1 color by 36 months. In the "what to expect the toddler years" book, identifying 4 colors is in the "may even be able to" section for 34-36 month olds. Ella's reliable with 5 colors, sometimes 6.

Is any of this really that unusual? No, not really. It just goes to show how much a child's interests impact their learning. Children generally learn a lot faster when they're really interested in something. Colors deeply fascinate Ella, so this isn't surprising.

sick again...

Well, it looks like Ella's going to be missing school tomorrow.

Last night we found she had a 102.7 degree fever. This one reacts very well to ibuprofen or acetaminophen, falling down to normal for the full expected duration of the medicine. It seems to stay reasonable for another hour after that, then starts creeping up again.

So far she hasn't had any significant other symptoms. She's got an occasional cough or two, and I've seen her nose drip once, but nothing that would be unusual for when Ella's not sick. About the only other reaction she's had is being a bit more tired, and snugly, than normal.

Regardless, she's doing well and is full of engergy most of the time. We've just had to limit our playing to the house and our own yard, no visits to the gym daycare today...

And for all the mothers who read this blog, Happy Mother's day!

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.

Back to school, and sign list..

Well, Ella's back to school following spring break, and she seems quite happy to be back at school. Today she even showed us a new sign related to school. We were at dinner and she signed "learn", and when asked about it she signed "learn - school". I guess our semi-recent addition of signing time vol 13 has a lot to do with that.

In general Ella continues to become more and more sociable, and communicative, and she continues to babble a lot and will repeatedly make specific babble sounds when prompted (Da, Hu, Gu, tooka, dooga). That's good because it demonstrates she has the idea of making specific sounds for a specific purpose. While she does a few other babbles (bu, and rarely pu), the odds of her echoing them back at your request is pretty low (15%?)

I've also converted my list of Ella's signs to a google doc, and I've added a link to it in the links section on the right, or you can just jump from here. I figure that will be useful for anyone interacting with Ella and wanting to know which signs she knows. It also has notes about some of her modifications to various signs.

School..

Bad blogger, no biscuit!

I mentioned back earlier that Ella would be starting school on the 17th, and it's almost two weeks after that and I've not blogged about it. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. So, there's no a LOT to blog about, and I apologize in advance if this post is a bit long and desne.

In any event, Ella is taking well to school. During the first week there was definitely some crying, particularly while being dropped off, but she has now acclimated to school as a part of her regular routine. Of course, she's off 7 school days in a row for spring break starting Friday, so we'll see how she does after a longer break than just a weekend.

Ella's class consists of 8 children, a few of whom are typically developing and the rest are other children with delays from a variety of different situations. Being a toddler class, the classes are mostly learning play oriented. The staff consists of a teacher, a few teaching assistants, and 3 therapists. Generally speaking, the therapists rotate in and out of the class, while the rest of the staff is present more-or-less every day. The children spend most of their time in group activities, and some of their time one-on-one with a therapist.

As for communicating home, there are a couple of things that are used to keep us informed. Every day, there's a binder that she takes to school with her, and brings home when she's done. These binders contain a series of laminated pages with pictures of the other children, staff, foods and toys. Near the end of the day, one of the staff places stickers on the pictures of who and what she played with, and what she snacked on at snack time. The binder also allows us to pass notes and references to the school staff, such as the list of Ella's signs we've placed in there.

In addition, Ella's teacher comes to our house once a week. We've only had one of these sessions so far, but these visits mostly focus on passing information back and forth. Her teacher tells us what she's been doing in class, and we tell her about some of her recent developments at home. Of course, Ella participates in the meetings to. This gives her teacher a chance to see some of the things Ella does in a home environment, where she's more comfortable, that she won't do in school.

One thing I have noticed is that she's been *really* excited about babbling lately. Obviously I can't prove the extra social interaction is causing it, but it's certainly not hurting. Also, Mental Mother tells me she's been coming home rather tired and napping quite hard most days. That's also a good sign, as it means the class is successfully stimulating her.

Whew. That's quite a dense post. I'll (hopefully) post more in the next few days.

Better, mostly..

Well, Ella's virus seems to have toned itself way down. On Friday, she went all day without any fever reducers and only had a mild temperature all day. Even at bedtime her temperature wasn't high enough to warrant a fever reducer under normal circumstances (although we did give her some as she would be only sparsely monitored overnight)

So, the worst seems to have passed for Ella, which is good.

Sick..

Well, Ella's got some kind of stomach virus.

She had a 102.5+ fever on weds afternoon, and it wouldn't go down very much even with ibuprofen and a tepid bath. Since the fever wouldn't break, Mental Mother made an appointment with a Nighttime Pediatrics and we took her in at 9:20pm. After a long wait, they tested her for flu and strep, but neither came up positive. So we took her home, gave her more ibuprofen, and put her to bed. The fever had broken at 1:30am, but when we checked on her later after the ibuprofen wore off, it had soared back up to 103.2. Today her fever was low, but needed occasional treatment with ibuprofen. Since then she's had one bout of stomach virus symptoms, so it looks like she has some kind of stomach bug that isn't influenza, but behaves similarly.

So Ella's a bit under the weather, and I don't feel 100% myself, but other than that, all's good at our home. 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.

progress

It's been a while since I've posted about Ella's progress, so here's a quick post on what she's up to.

In the signs department, Ella's now up to 95 signs I've got documented, but I'm probably missing a few. She now picks them up fairly rapidly if used in context.

In the eating department, Ella still isn't using utensils, but she's very good with an open cup. She can even pick up an open cup one handed now and drink from it (with some chance of spilling). She's starting to be willing to pick up large foods and bite chunks off, as she did with the flatbread, but she still needs many foods cut up for her.

We've also been potty training Ella recently, with fairly good success so far, largely thanks to mentalmother. We've been training for about a week now, and she still has a lot of accidents, and sometimes she gets a bit stubborn about it, but on the whole she's taking fairly well to it.

The past two weeks have also been very talkative for Ella. She's not using words routinely, but we're getting a lot of babbling and a variety of different sounds. In general she seems to be experimenting with her mouth a bit, which is a good thing.

Anyway, I best be going, hope you're all well.

Fruit, shoes, flatbread and pizza..

I'll post some progress later, but right now I wanted to take a minute to share some short and amusing stories from this weekend.

On Saturday, we were packing up to go out shopping. So I picked up two pairs of Ella's shoes, and asked her "which pair of shoes do you want". She pointed to the pair in my left hand, then signed "pear", "shoes". Very cute, but it raises the question, how do you teach a toddler about homonyms? :-)

On Sunday, we went out to lunch, trying the new Cosi restaurant here. They didn't have Ella's staple chicken on the menu, so we tried ordering her pizza. She would not touch the pizza, but my meal came with a side of a dense, chewy, whole-grain flatbread. That she ate. Even more strange for a child that rarely bites chunks off larger foods, she actually ate it by biting chunks off the big piece.

Just goes to show, there's no predicting what might appeal to a toddler.

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