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.