Whew! Alot of time has passed and Ella has made steady progress in small increments. It seems like every weekend brings something new for her…in her special, unusual way. Yesterday (Sunday) she walked to the park and back holding on to Etan & my hands. (This is a 15-20 minute walk each way! at her pace.) Her walking is going well. She is reasonably stable on her feet but is scared of losing her balance and holds tight onto an adult hand, so much so that she’d surely topple over if she didn’t have it. Ella needs alot of incentives to get her going so we proceed the walk with a good dose of “We’ll do nad-ned [swinging] at the park”. That really gets her going and then she laughs and shouts for a bit just imagining the swinging yet to come. Ella is like that. You can mention something she loves (nad-ned probably takes the top of the list, a favorite movie, singing songs…etc.) and she’ll start wriggling and crooning with uncontrollable joy. It is really uncontrollable with Ella. It is as if her funny bone is connected directly to the synapses in the brain. Her comando crawl is getting better too. She uses a bent left arm to propel herself forward while reaching with the right hand & arm. She doesn’t use her legs much but does lift her behind now which is more of a crawl than we she first started doing this. She needs incentive– which is usually an annoying battery operated button toy. She had a great playdate yesterday with Nate (see picture). We played school again and Ella was really into it. She almost blasted off when we took out the song folder. Speech is advancing, if one counts appropriate unintelligible vocalizations. She is trying. She seems to try to take part in conversations using a high pitched gibberish. The interesting thing is that sometime she’ll come out with a word that is absolutely on target: “All-done”, “more”, “Ella”, “no” but then she won’t be able to use it again. Apparently, consistent inconsistency is typical for kids with neurological problems, so she’s right on target!