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!