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.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, February 2, 2009
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.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
