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.