Our Lady of the Big Girl Potty

Thanks to her own innate modesty, I am able to post this photo of Noa demonstrating her skills on the big girl potty.
As usual I have gone a long time between posts and so find myself posting a whole series of photos and videos on one day (5 today, which might be a record).
It's be very busy in the Land of Noa - but we finally seem to have cleared things with the Board of Ed in terms of Noa's placement for the fall, and have an IEP in place which on the advice of my lawyer (Ben) I will not talk about except to say that it is truly mind-boggling how much paper can be generated and how many people must be met to discuss one 5-year-old child. No wonder she thinks she's the center of the universe!
We've also been busy with the bus company that transports Noa to and from school every day. I'm sure Ben would also suggest that I not blog about that -- although I will say that we've had days where it seems to take them nearly two hours to get her from Central Park West and 65th to 30th and First Ave (the district does have rules about how long you can keep a kid on the bus: 1 hour and 15 minutes). So that's been another fun summer game.
And lastly, there is Medicaid. We're trying - once again to get Noa on straight Medicaid while similtaneously desputing charges with her current Medicaid HMO which - as you may recall - decided that Noa didn't need physical therapy because it clearly wasn't working (after 9 or 10 sessions she wasn't walking, so must be a lost cause). The way it works in NY is that once you're on Medicaid they want you to join one of their HMO's that manages your care. Straight Medicaid is for those who can't be served under those HMO's.
Couple of funny (not funny) things in this:
1 - We selected this particular HMO because it was the only one that covered the place where she gets PT. Even now, we couldn't use their rejection of her as a reason to be on straight Medicaid because on paper, they say they cover that program even though they actually have no allowance for people with a permanent disability... which is why we went on Medicaid in the first place.
2 - I discovered (quite by accident) that our HMO does have "case managers" for people with chronic or complicated medical conditions. I called and talked to one and she told me that they just give advice and her advice was to continue with our dispute - that we had to prove that the PT was "restorative" because there is no allowance for disability. I still have no idea what that woman's job really is - though she was nice enough and told me that she hears these stories all the times from parents of disabled kids.
ANYWAY - the other posts are much more fun than this run down of what we did with our summer vacation. Hope you're all enjoying yours!