It's 6am and I just heard you make a noise. Maybe you are awake. It's already been quite a busy morning. I got an email from Ifat about the Mifne Centre. I asked her if she could find out if people on the 'inside' though the she was a quack. She said categorically not, quite the opposite. I asked her to come up with some important questions to make sure we get answers to. This is a copy and paste from her email:

In what areas or domains there will be improvements?

1. Communication: language?, more eye contact? more initiations? more sharing ("daddy, Look!" + pointing to thing that he is interested in, and want you to notice this too, and looking at you and the object intermediately.)?

2. Emotional: more positive affect directed to people and not only to objects (like number), less temper tantrum, less obsessions.

3. Social: more interested in his peers (how they can help? the sessions are not with other kids).

I think they are all good questions. There are no guarantees, but they are some of the areas that I would want to see an improvement in.

Hanna Alonim from the Mifne Center has rearranged the meeting for 5 April, which is better for me I think, it might be stressful for Mummy as it is her busy day in her busy week. Ifat and her colleagues have reservations about whether the very young children who go there might not have had PDD could be right, it could be wrong, I simply have no information on it, and I suspect their parents do know though. It does read like a scientist's viewpoint. Parents will be just relieved that they spent lots of money and time on an insurance policy. I'm not so fussed about Mifne's statistics, I'm more fussed that the Center is fussed. Hanna Alonim might actually say no to us, but she is too busy and she wouldn't waste time on us I think if she didn't think Ben had something she could work on. This is the thing that gives me hope. It is purely a logical, empirical, statistical, financial thing. She runs what is essentially a business - it's a private clinic - and her reputation is one of success. She doesn't invite charity or get involved in failure that she can see in advance.

I also thought that maybe - and this bit I don't know - but if you are going to Mifne, you are already doing lots of other things with your kid, it's not the first place you go, they have a long waiting list, so you would have already been working hard with your kid anyway. So it presumably must bring more than 10 hours of Greenspan a week to the table.

I also got an email from Roni, via the COO of Kirkman Labs:

I just received this info from the COO (Larry Newman) at Kirkman Labs and thought it might be of interest to you:

Minerals, probiotics and enzymes can be frozen indefinitely.
Oil soluble vitamins (A, E, D) can be frozen for significant lengths of time
Water soluble vitamins such as the B’s and C etc can be frozen for short lengths of time, not exceeding a few days. Beyond that, they pick up moisture and start degrading.

This may come in handy when ordering supplements to last through the summer months, too, such as probiotics, and if interested in making up some vita-popsicles

So, you'll be eating some home-made lollies from now on!!!

We took Mummy to work, and it was without any problems, which is pretty normal now. I am glad I keep this blog because you need to remember how hard things used to be. You can get used to normal very very quickly. You are counting all the time though, much more than before, and your memory for street numbers is shocking. I can see how people who can remember Pi to a million decimal places pull that off, basically they are high-functioning autistics. You spend lots of time counting backwards, 9,7,5,3,1...77,75,73...I am not sure if this isn't you remembering a street and its numbering. You love our street and Sderot Ben Amy, the numbers are not in sequence because they aren't all built. I sometimes take you on a trip there on the way back. We saw a fire next to number 25 Bnei Binyamin and you ask me to go back and visit it every day. It's gone, fortunately...

You are very good with the fish - you ask to feed them every day at least once. I read in the book A Friend Called Henry that Nuala taught her son responsibility via the dog. He needed

Little Steps: You pedalled a bike! Some very strange conversations towards the end of the day, almost startling. I am not sure, but I think something jumped forward. Let me check your language tomorrow. You said 'yes' a few times, 'ken' as well. You made excellent eye contact in the park and at home. Used words I can't remember you using...
Poop: None...
Sleep: Woke 6.30am. Nap 12.25pm to 2.40pm. In bed 9pm.

Today's Food
Breakfast: Chocolate Cake (double portion), Banana (8.45am) Cornflakes and Rice Milk (10am - fed to you because you wouldn't eat it probably due to the chocolate cake), Spring Mango Juice with 1/4 tsp Calcium, 550mg Buffered Vitamin C and 1/2 capsule Nu Thera (8.45am, not much drunk till 2pm)
Snack: Half a Golden Delicious Apple (11am)
Lunch: Cherry Jam Sandwich with homemade GF bread (3pm, refused and let Nanny feed you half at 5pm), Rice & Quinoa Spaghetti and homemade tomato sauce with GF soup mix (3pm, barely touched, let me feed you half at 3.45pm)
Snack: Mango Juice250mg Buffered Vitamin C and 1/2 capsule Nu Thera (5pm), 3 Good For Me! Chocolate Truffles
Dinner: Sweet Potato Chips (refused again), two bowls of rice (double helping), Spring Mango Nectar with 20mg capsule of Zinc(8pm)