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.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
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
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
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Let her eat cake!
It's been a while since I've made a post (although I did update the "Recent Progress" list earlier this month), so we're more than past due for an update.
This past weekend was Ella's cousin's birthday party. Ella had quite a lot of fun at the party, and managed to do a few new things as far as eating goes. The most notable was that she ate cake without incident. In the past (even as recently as this summer) Ella was not able to eat cake, as the crumbly texture caused her to gag. That is a good thing as far as mouth control and texture tolerance goes.
She also tried a hot dog (well, a pig in a blanket) for the first time, and succeed in biting a chunk off and eating it. It is only very recently that we've been successful in getting Ella to bite chunks off of larger food items, and it's even better that she did it with something "unfamiliar". She's been fairly resistant to eating foods outside her normal day-to-day foods. Fortunately her day-to-day foods comprise a fairly balanced diet with all the major food groups represented, but there's not a lot of variety there.
In general Ella's "safe" foods are:
chicken nuggets of most any sort
turkey meatballs
peanut butter and jelly topped pancakes (a little weird, but she likes them)
Dr. Praeger's spinach pancakes
Dr. Praeger's broccoli pancakes
Earth's best spring vegetables and pasta (yes, it's a baby food, but she loves it and it's vegetables.)
American cheese
yogurt
Cheerios, Kix and Rice Crispies
Any common fruit (esp grapes, blueberries, and canned pineapple)
french fries
a variety of crackers and cookies.
All in all, not too shabby for a fussy two year old. You've got meats, vegetables, dairy, and grains in there. I'd be happier if she was more adventurous in her eating, but at least its a healthy diet, and we're not fighting to find a vegetable she'll eat.
This past weekend was Ella's cousin's birthday party. Ella had quite a lot of fun at the party, and managed to do a few new things as far as eating goes. The most notable was that she ate cake without incident. In the past (even as recently as this summer) Ella was not able to eat cake, as the crumbly texture caused her to gag. That is a good thing as far as mouth control and texture tolerance goes.
She also tried a hot dog (well, a pig in a blanket) for the first time, and succeed in biting a chunk off and eating it. It is only very recently that we've been successful in getting Ella to bite chunks off of larger food items, and it's even better that she did it with something "unfamiliar". She's been fairly resistant to eating foods outside her normal day-to-day foods. Fortunately her day-to-day foods comprise a fairly balanced diet with all the major food groups represented, but there's not a lot of variety there.
In general Ella's "safe" foods are:
chicken nuggets of most any sort
turkey meatballs
peanut butter and jelly topped pancakes (a little weird, but she likes them)
Dr. Praeger's spinach pancakes
Dr. Praeger's broccoli pancakes
Earth's best spring vegetables and pasta (yes, it's a baby food, but she loves it and it's vegetables.)
American cheese
yogurt
Cheerios, Kix and Rice Crispies
Any common fruit (esp grapes, blueberries, and canned pineapple)
french fries
a variety of crackers and cookies.
All in all, not too shabby for a fussy two year old. You've got meats, vegetables, dairy, and grains in there. I'd be happier if she was more adventurous in her eating, but at least its a healthy diet, and we're not fighting to find a vegetable she'll eat.
Monday, November 17, 2008
ABC's and more..
Again, I haven't done this in a while, so sorry about that.
One of our recent discoveries is that Ella can recognize at least half the letters of the alphabet. I've been testing her with the letters from her word whammer, and she's been doing well as long as she can maintain interest in the game. She's had a strong interest in her "alphabet town" toy over the past few months, and it's starting to sink in.
She's also now taking pretty strongly to imitation, which was previously one of our biggest barriers in teaching her.
Other than that, she's got several new signs, including "floss teeth", which she uses often as she actually enjoys having her teeth flossed. (we use a pre-threaded plastic flosser). Why she likes this so much, I don't know, but she actively asks for it. Ahh, the interests of a two year old.
In other news my site has recently gotten a lot hits to older posts from people searching about omega 3's and dyspraxia/DCD. In light of that, I figure I'll refresh my opinions on the matter. If you're not interested in this topic, you can skip the rest of the post. :-)
We've had Ella on 1/4tsp of highly refined Cod liver oil (250mg's of omega-3's, mostly dha) per day since June. After, I really don't think it's directly done much for her motor wise. However, she's had a dramatic change in her motivation levels since we started it, and that's made all the difference. And that dramatic change is still in full force, and that's wonderful for us. In may, Ella was really hitting a deep low in development and was difficult to motivate. About 4 weeks after we started giving her cod liver oil, she really started being motivated to explore and try things.
I still can't say the oil has actually done anything for Ella, as it could all be a coincidence and she was just "ready". However, given the current streak of development, we're not stopping it. If you pressed me, I'd say that it's probably helped her a little bit on an intellectual and behavioral level, which in turn has resulted in motor progress. However, that's really a theory that fits my observations. The scientific evidence to support it exists, but it's a little thin.
There's also a lot of supplemented products with DHA only in them here in the US. Those products didn't seem to do much for Ella. She was on those pretty much since she was 2 months old (formula, then yogurt, and fruit/cereal containers), averaging 40mg a day of DHA. Admittedly the dosage is higher on the fish oil, but it's also got a noticable amount of EPA in it. Givent that going from 40mg DHA alone to 150mg DHA + 100mg EPA made a big difference, I find it hard to believe that DHA alone is the important piece.
One of our recent discoveries is that Ella can recognize at least half the letters of the alphabet. I've been testing her with the letters from her word whammer, and she's been doing well as long as she can maintain interest in the game. She's had a strong interest in her "alphabet town" toy over the past few months, and it's starting to sink in.
She's also now taking pretty strongly to imitation, which was previously one of our biggest barriers in teaching her.
Other than that, she's got several new signs, including "floss teeth", which she uses often as she actually enjoys having her teeth flossed. (we use a pre-threaded plastic flosser). Why she likes this so much, I don't know, but she actively asks for it. Ahh, the interests of a two year old.
In other news my site has recently gotten a lot hits to older posts from people searching about omega 3's and dyspraxia/DCD. In light of that, I figure I'll refresh my opinions on the matter. If you're not interested in this topic, you can skip the rest of the post. :-)
We've had Ella on 1/4tsp of highly refined Cod liver oil (250mg's of omega-3's, mostly dha) per day since June. After, I really don't think it's directly done much for her motor wise. However, she's had a dramatic change in her motivation levels since we started it, and that's made all the difference. And that dramatic change is still in full force, and that's wonderful for us. In may, Ella was really hitting a deep low in development and was difficult to motivate. About 4 weeks after we started giving her cod liver oil, she really started being motivated to explore and try things.
I still can't say the oil has actually done anything for Ella, as it could all be a coincidence and she was just "ready". However, given the current streak of development, we're not stopping it. If you pressed me, I'd say that it's probably helped her a little bit on an intellectual and behavioral level, which in turn has resulted in motor progress. However, that's really a theory that fits my observations. The scientific evidence to support it exists, but it's a little thin.
There's also a lot of supplemented products with DHA only in them here in the US. Those products didn't seem to do much for Ella. She was on those pretty much since she was 2 months old (formula, then yogurt, and fruit/cereal containers), averaging 40mg a day of DHA. Admittedly the dosage is higher on the fish oil, but it's also got a noticable amount of EPA in it. Givent that going from 40mg DHA alone to 150mg DHA + 100mg EPA made a big difference, I find it hard to believe that DHA alone is the important piece.
Monday, October 27, 2008
A quick update...
Ok, it's been *way* too long.. sometimes life just gets busy..
In any event, the three of us have been fighting colds for the past week or two. At this point Ella's pretty much over it, and me and mentalmother are on the down-swing of it.
In other recent progress, Ella started standing up on her own, without using anything to pull up on, a little over a week ago. At first it was rare unless you specifically asked her to do it, but she's now doing it quite regularly on her own as a way to get up to standing. Previously she'd have to crawl over to something to hold onto to either pull (tall item) or push (short item) up on.
She's also continuing to develop her signs, and they're now coming fast enough I'm sure I've missed documenting some of them. But she's up to 52 I've documented, and who knows how many more she has. Back in august she had 15 that I posted as a list. Here's her current signs, in more-or-less the order she learned them:
Eat, More, Milk, Light, finished, Dog, Open, Book, Shoes, Daddy,Music, Hug, bird, Drink, cracker, cereal, play, cheese, on ,wash hands, brush teeth, potty, please, sorry, cookie, bath, flower, thank you, time (used to request signing time videos), swing, tree, grapes, slow, car, motorcycle, clothes, silly, rock, game, train, boat, ice cream, socks, cold, like, blanket, hat, excused, break (this one she invented her own sign, and was not taught the ASL version), bed, baby.
That's not a huge vocabulary, but it's enough to express a lot of basic needs and interests.
Anyway, I best get some sleep. Hope you're all well.
In any event, the three of us have been fighting colds for the past week or two. At this point Ella's pretty much over it, and me and mentalmother are on the down-swing of it.
In other recent progress, Ella started standing up on her own, without using anything to pull up on, a little over a week ago. At first it was rare unless you specifically asked her to do it, but she's now doing it quite regularly on her own as a way to get up to standing. Previously she'd have to crawl over to something to hold onto to either pull (tall item) or push (short item) up on.
She's also continuing to develop her signs, and they're now coming fast enough I'm sure I've missed documenting some of them. But she's up to 52 I've documented, and who knows how many more she has. Back in august she had 15 that I posted as a list. Here's her current signs, in more-or-less the order she learned them:
Eat, More, Milk, Light, finished, Dog, Open, Book, Shoes, Daddy,Music, Hug, bird, Drink, cracker, cereal, play, cheese, on ,wash hands, brush teeth, potty, please, sorry, cookie, bath, flower, thank you, time (used to request signing time videos), swing, tree, grapes, slow, car, motorcycle, clothes, silly, rock, game, train, boat, ice cream, socks, cold, like, blanket, hat, excused, break (this one she invented her own sign, and was not taught the ASL version), bed, baby.
That's not a huge vocabulary, but it's enough to express a lot of basic needs and interests.
Anyway, I best get some sleep. Hope you're all well.
Monday, October 6, 2008
A weekend of Ella fun.
A while ago, a friend had recommended Dutch Wonderland as a good place to take a young child after he took his daughter there. This weekend, we decided to take a long weekend and go up to Lancaster, making Dutch Wonderland one of our stops.
The amusement park was quite good. Ella was only able to ride the smallest group of rides, but there were quite a few for her, and she had a good time on them. She particularly enjoyed a "VR" ride, that was essentially a small movie theater in a bus-shaped capsule that rocked wildly on hydraulics. She laughed hysterically the whole time.
During our trip, we chose to stay at the Willow Valley Resort. This was a really nice place to stay too, and is very child-friendly. The resort has a indoor pool complex that's a lot like a small water park and Ella had a great time there. A lot of the water was shallow enough Ella could walk around in it. Walking in water threw her off for a little bit, but she quickly got the hang of it. We wound up getting a package plan that included breakfast and dinner at the resort. The breakfast smorgasbord is decent, but the dinner one generally left a lot to be desired. We actually wound up using one of our dinners as credit towards their Sunday brunch instead, and that was really very good, bordering on excellent which is really surprising in a buffet-style setup. It was really a day-and-night scenario with no comparison at all.
We wound up staying 3 nights, which was probably more than we needed, but it let us take our time and enjoy ourselves. I think next time we'll go for a shorter stay, and avoid the in-house dinners, but it's certainly worth doing again sometime later on.
The amusement park was quite good. Ella was only able to ride the smallest group of rides, but there were quite a few for her, and she had a good time on them. She particularly enjoyed a "VR" ride, that was essentially a small movie theater in a bus-shaped capsule that rocked wildly on hydraulics. She laughed hysterically the whole time.
During our trip, we chose to stay at the Willow Valley Resort. This was a really nice place to stay too, and is very child-friendly. The resort has a indoor pool complex that's a lot like a small water park and Ella had a great time there. A lot of the water was shallow enough Ella could walk around in it. Walking in water threw her off for a little bit, but she quickly got the hang of it. We wound up getting a package plan that included breakfast and dinner at the resort. The breakfast smorgasbord is decent, but the dinner one generally left a lot to be desired. We actually wound up using one of our dinners as credit towards their Sunday brunch instead, and that was really very good, bordering on excellent which is really surprising in a buffet-style setup. It was really a day-and-night scenario with no comparison at all.
We wound up staying 3 nights, which was probably more than we needed, but it let us take our time and enjoy ourselves. I think next time we'll go for a shorter stay, and avoid the in-house dinners, but it's certainly worth doing again sometime later on.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Fun at a wedding
This past weekend was my cousin's wedding, and we went, taking Ella with us. The rehearsal dinner turned out to be a blast for Ella. One of my other cousins has a 4 year old daughter, who was dressed in a bright-pink frilly tutu type dress. Ella thought this was the greatest thing ever, and proceeded to spend most of evening running following her and laughing her head off. When Ella would catch up, the other girl would turn around and poke Ella in the cheeks. This caused Ella to stick out her tongue and laugh even harder.
It was really great to see Ella having such a good time running around and interacting with other children.
Ella has also recently started walking around in grass without having her hand held. Since the surface is uneven this is a bit more difficult for her, and she's been resistant to doing so. However, by Saturday she was chasing her cousin Jake around the yard of the church.
On the language front, Ella is now up to34 signs. The 17 new signs ella has learned since August 12th are: cheese, on, wash hands, brush teeth, potty, please, sorry, cookie, bath, duck, flower, thank you, time, swing, tree, grapes, and slow. So, Ella has doubled her signs in a month and 10 days.. not too shabby.
Ella is also taking much better to the toddler bed. She finally took a nap in the bed. For a while she wasn't napping, then she started napping on the floor in her room, and now she's napping in the bed.
It was really great to see Ella having such a good time running around and interacting with other children.
Ella has also recently started walking around in grass without having her hand held. Since the surface is uneven this is a bit more difficult for her, and she's been resistant to doing so. However, by Saturday she was chasing her cousin Jake around the yard of the church.
On the language front, Ella is now up to34 signs. The 17 new signs ella has learned since August 12th are: cheese, on, wash hands, brush teeth, potty, please, sorry, cookie, bath, duck, flower, thank you, time, swing, tree, grapes, and slow. So, Ella has doubled her signs in a month and 10 days.. not too shabby.
Ella is also taking much better to the toddler bed. She finally took a nap in the bed. For a while she wasn't napping, then she started napping on the floor in her room, and now she's napping in the bed.
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