A Letter to my friends and family...
May 22, 2007

Dear _________________,

Hehe, yeah, like I ever start my letters that way. I write you letters all the time, out by hand, several pages long. They always end up in their envelopes but rarely end up being sent. I'm cursed to always lose the letters I finish. When I spring clean, I run into about 10 letters for each of you ^^" Or, I know where they are, but whenever I remember to put our new set of stamps on them or take them out to the mail, it's when I can't (for instance, while in the shower, I remember I need to mail your letter, by the time I'm out of the shower, I forget =_=) and then, when I can actually take it out there, it's several months old. I'm not very dependable when it comes to letters so sorry =_=

I've been playing a lot of World of Warcraft lately and I'd love to see you on there and play with you too (translation: This is my evil plot to get you hopelessly addicted as well). My servers are Thorium Brotherhood (Saronai is my main there) and Steamwheedle Cartel (Valturia is my main there), and I can hook you up if you ever start playing. They are roleplaying servers though and I am one of those who actually roleplays and tries to stay in character as much as possible.

I started a garden a few months back, it's all growing very nicely, at the moment I have three strawberries which are not ready to eat yet. The only other consumable plants are still babies that are doing quite well. I really wanted to get a tree this year, and Walmart was selling one of my favourites: The weeping Cherry tree for only $25 (I've only ever seen them as cheap as $99), but I prefer that tree when it is more established, bigger and we don't expect to be staying here more than a year (we want to try and get a two bedroom apartment through the land lord we have now). Plus I'm not sure how the landlord would have felt about a tree anyhow. Most of my regular plants are actually in pots, the spots of the yard that would be perfect for a garden are filled in with rocks and I've discovered that there is some sort of mesh cloth underneathe them so I can't just plant through the rocks *sigh* However, I did dig up a spot at the side of the house so I can grow corn, cantaloupe and sunflowers. I love my garden ^_^ (and Michael loves his plants too)

Speaking of which, Michael is now in speech class, and already with his first speech assignment is sounding better (he needs to practice his f sound for homework). I finally got the papers signed for his psych eval (a requirement before he's permitted extra attention for any possible learning disabilities), and his history filled out on it. They think he might have some sort of condition affecting sensory perception (apparently something that lead to many misdiagnoses of things like ADD and ADHD back when my brother was in grade school and almost every child was being labled with it). This condition, if he does have it (and looking into it was why I needed to sign psych eval papers), is not something they will be medicating, but it is something that will require a different approach to learning. His biggest symptom is what they call auditory fatigue. In which he tries to listen but he loses the information past a certain point, or just stops listening past a certain point (not that his attention is gone, he just stops making sense of the words) and has a tendency to get overwhelmed by too much information at once, causing him to cry with hurt feelings when he does something he thinks is right and has to do it over again and that kind of thing. The speech teacher suggested a book on it called "The Out of Sync Child" which I'm reading and then will give to Delos to read afterwards.

Mostly, his disability comes from only being able to follow short directions. He can do the work independently but when it involves more than three simple steps or more than two detailed steps, he needs more personal attention on it (someone to tell him each step when it is time for that step). Other than that they did say it was quite obvious that he was a very affectionate, social, and extremely happy little boy. Delos wasn't sure if they were just trying to butter us up to allow him into speech class (apparently some parents refuse extra speech help), but I took it for what it was since Michael is that way at home, happy, social, loves everyone, and a friend to all he meets kinda boy *huggles the boy* and when I made that point Delos agreed. I mean, to me, what they said about Michael's happiness level and personableness is very obvious, every one he meets is his friend, which he loudly proclaims and he really does throw his heart into everything. He is so very like me when I was his age. I wish I'd had the available resources and stability to get him into head start.

All of us, teachers, Delos, me, school psychologist, etc agree that his biggest obstacle that is causing him problems is getting use to school, getting use to being around so many other kids and being expected to work and not play. So many kids today have at least experienced Day Care, but up until he started school Michael has only been in the church day care twice and only during church.

He use to qualify for the half step program, which basically means you have the smarts but you aren't ready for first grade because of the length of the day increase, and increases in what's expected of you, etc. However, apparently he's missed way too many days now and so if he doesn't meet Kindergarten requirements we will be advised to hold him back for Kindergarten again (it is the parent's choice here to pass them on or hold them back if they may not be ready). Apparently the board who decides who gets into the program does not care why the child missed the days. It seems a bit much though, I wonder how many kids need it because they are new to the group learning thing? And if they are new to that, then they aren't going to have as good an immune system and are very likely to catch every single sickness brought in. Doesn't seem very fair since all but a few of the days he missed was due to sickness (if I'd sent him to school they would have sent him right back). The few days he missed otherwise were because the bus came early and we did not have a way to get him to school otherwise at the time.

Anyhow, I suppose that's enough of an update for now. I could keep going but I think it might be better if I just write you another letter here.

Love ya!

--Saronai