1. Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you who have emailed and mailed to help my friends. I am overwhelmed at the generosity of everyone. Truly. Thank you. I will keep you posted on the updates -- it looks like the family will be in the States in March for the surgery. Possibly sooner, pending scheduling.

2. I want to send D. to a Jewish special needs summer camp. Of course, the very first thing that they want is a psychological eval, not more than two years old. Followed by:

social history (also not more than 2 years old), IEP (current), educational eval (not more than 2 years old), related service evals (current), medical and immunization history, neuro and/or psychiatric eval (if applicant is currently on psychotropic drugs) (!), and a recent photo.

Oy. Whatever happened to name, mom's cell phone, general permission slip for field trips?

Also, there is NO WAY IN HELL that we can afford this camp, which is heavily subsidized for New Yorkers. So we are trying to work out a deal wherein I would write for them and they would let my kid go for free or very reduced tuition, and if that doesn't work, you will notice an abrupt halt in my blogging, because I will shoot myself in the head.

3. We also want to send our daughters to Israel for the summer. Actually, my almost-11-y-o (I KNOW) wanted to go to sleepaway camp, and when I checked the prices, I laughed aloud. Not with glee, of course, but with actual, genuine humor, as in Ha ha, that is very funny! My daughter is so not going to sleepaway camp! And it turns out that tickets to Israel are WAY CHEAPER, so that's what we're hoping to do.

4. If three of my children go away for the summer, we will have only J. and Baby A. here for the summer, and it will be like we are a young married couple on vacation!!!! I cannot IMAGINE the copious amounts of free time. Wait, yes I can, and I'm doing it RIGHT NOW.

5. I have spent many hours this weekend scrubbing the grout in my tile floors. I am ashamed to tell you how filthy my floors clearly were, because the amount of dirt I am scrubbing away is... well, I think the technical term is A FREAKING LOT. Holy crap. Mr. WG wants to take a picture of me on my hands and knees scrubbing because he finds it amusing.

6. If Aetna does not pay for my son's speech therapy, I am seriously going to go out of my mind.

That is all.