I haven't been nearly as good as I intended to be in keeping up with this blog. This is so sad, because Elli has little miracles happening every day, and I know I need to be keeping a record of them. So, for the month of March, my goal is to post EVERY SINGLE DAY on either this site or our family website. Go ahead and remind me if I ever start to slack in this endeavor. (:

Yesterday morning when I went to get Elli out of her bedroom, she was laying down playing with a toy. When she heard me come in, she bolted up and said excitedly, "a drink, a oatmeal, a bath, a rock-a-bye!" It was so cute and so amazing. Definitely the first time she has strung words together like that. You obviously wouldn't really call it a sentence, but still! She knew the morning routine and said it in her own cute way.

Unless you really know Elli, you can't imagine how far she has come in the last few months. She seriously only had a handful of words, and she was never consistent in using them. At our last IEP, which was a couple of months ago, we went through all the words she had used and it was less than ten. She would repeat words that we said, but we're talking about words that she would use on her own and knew their meaning. It wasn't just that she wasn't talking, she also wasn't understanding very much. And, like I said, she was never consistent in using her words. You cannot imagine how wonderful it is to now be able to ask a question like, "What do you want?" and have her answer it much of the time, even if it is usually food! (:(:(:(:

One milestone we have crossed is that she will now consistently point to her body parts when asked. She has known them for awhile, but not understood to point to them. Also, we are progressing on the goal of spoon feeding herself!!!!! It's important to know that when we listed this goal, we had had zero success with this. She hated if you tried to put a spoon in her hands and would fight it tooth and nail. It was a fight I had given up on, until a few weeks ago when, miracle of miracles, she let me put the spoon in her hand and help her put it to her mouth. Now, for the last two weeks, she has eaten her entire bowl of oatmeal BY HERSELF! Ok, I guess that is a stretch. She still needs help getting the oatmeal on the spoon. But she picks the spoon up, brings it to her mouth and puts it back in the bowl all by herself. I just have to make sure that the spoon is loaded before she picks it back up again, because the concept of scooping the food is still missing. STILL!! Our girl is eating by herself! (:(:(:(: When we first adopted Elli, at age two and a half, she had no concept of putting food in her mouth. She LOVED to eat, but you had to put the food in her mouth for her. It took about six months to teach her the concept of bringing her hand to her mouth. She was that delayed. And then for over a year, if you would hand her, say, a piece of bread, she would take a bite and then throw the rest of it across the room. It wasn't that she didn't want more-- she just couldn't get the concept of taking a bite and putting the rest down where she could find it again. Now, this isn't a problem. So even though the feeding progress has been slow, it is significant and wonderful.

Well, this is all I have time for, but know that there is much more to come! Also, I have quite a few words to add to the sidebar-- YAY!!!

We love you dearly, our sweet Elli-Belly!

Christianne