5th month

2/14 UPDATE: Friday, one hour before close of business, the beginning of a three day holiday weekend, and four days before we take off, we received the news that our Italy doctor appointments have been canceled and our travel plans have been pulled! The pediatric audiologist went into labor herself, (4 weeks early) so now she's on maternity leave for the next 10 weeks or so! After much frustration and a few tears, we've decided to buy two more plane tickets for Travis and me to join the kids tickets (that we bought as nonrefundable tickets) and take a big family vacation to Italy for10 days. Travis already has the days off arranged and it's a vacation spot we want to tour while we're in Europe so we're just going to make the best of the time and the money already spent on the trip. So, no medical diagnosis for Isaac this month! It will probably take 3-4 weeks for new medical plans to work out for his hearing tests. Who knows where they will send us now. We had ear molds made and hearing aides pre-ordered so we can be as well prepared as possible and make the best use of our time with "the professionals".

2/28 UPDATE: Isaac has new doctor appointments set for the 9th, 10th and 11th in Portsmouth, Virginia. Travis and I have had to make some difficult decisions the last couple of days and we've decided that I will take Isaac to VA myself and he will stay here in Spain with the kids. Of all the weeks for me to leave my homeschool kids this will be a great one. Camryn will be at the public school for the yearly standardized testing every day next week and Sloan can easily join her class for the entire week too. Ethan will continue his regular public school schedule. That leaves Travis with approved flex hours at work so he can get the kids off to school each morning and be back home for the afternoon bus stop. Sounds easy, right? Isaac and I will do our best to get from point A to point B without "too many" problems. I'm just waiting for the military to get my plane tickets set up and looking forward to spending the week in English speaking USA . It will definitely be out of my comfort zone fly internationally, get back and forth from hotel to hospital all week, and deal with all the medical appointments by myself! I'll have to dig down to pull out "the confident and independent woman" that's been hiding since we moved overseas. Eeek! I hope I don't get lost in the Madrid airport trying to find my connections! I wish I knew Spanish better. I'll have plenty to do to keep me busy and I'm actually kind of looking forward to daily hotel room service and some quiet time to myself (with the baby of course). I'll just focus on one step at a time instead of dealing with the whole ordeal...