TV programme: Anything super hero. You love watching Avengers cartoons with Abba. iPhone App: Minecraft! Meal: Pizza. Still. If the day ever comes that you dont like pizza I will know the world is ending. Fruit: Apples. Vegetable: As long as they are raw and not cooked you love carrots. You also eat red peppers and have decided you like shakshuka but still wont eat a regular tomato. Breakfast: Yogurt. With chocolate cereal balls mixed in. Drink: Juice mostly although you love weekends when we drink cold drinks too. Toy: Not so much a toy, you love riding your bike. Without training wheels! You love: Minecraft. Reading. Super heroes. Harry Potter.
Something that happened yesterday: You dropped your pillow off your bed last night, it knocked over your metal water bottle and you woke up with a huge fright. I sat with you for a few minutes and got the best middle of the night cuddles before you went back to sleep.
I’ve spoken before about how amazing my kids are in regards to learning Hebrew. How that, within the 1st few months of living in Israel, they were already able to hold a conversation with their friends, teachers and the cashiers at the supermarket.
The fact is that both kids are now fluent. They even know words in Hebrew that they don’t know the English for. Lots of dictionary looking up going on over here.
One of the things that struck me this week is that Faith tends to speak Hebrew when she is playing by herself. I often listen to her playing with her dolls or other toys and speaking in Hebrew to them and making them speak in Hebrew. She very rarely speaks to her dolls in English. She also sings in Hebrew all the time.
Its interesting to me because I don’t think Aaron would do it if he still played with his dolls and action figures by himself (he tends to prefer reading when he is by himself now).
When they play together, just the two of them, they will play in English with a few random Hebrew words or phrases thrown in. When they play together and they have friends over, they speak Hebrew mostly but they switch to English when they are telling each other what to do or fighting about something. I have to keep reminding them that they must speak Hebrew even if it doesn’t involve their friends because its rude to speak English in front of people who don’t understand.
On Thursday afternoon, while on the way to a work fun evening, I received a message from our babysitter that she was ill and wouldn’t be able to fetch the kids. The problem was that, because it is Chanukah holidays, the kids finished their after school program earlier than usual and there was no way Paul or I could get to fetch them on time.
We panicked. Paul called a variety of our friends who have kids at school with ours but they were all unavailable. Aunty Roro (who has been my saving grace before in an emergency) was not at home either. In the mean time, I had hopped on a bus to get back to my office so I could catch my regular bus home and Paul was at the train station waiting for the next train.
The after care teacher had called me to see where we were as she needed to leave and a mom who was at the school waiting for her kid to finish an extramural said she could wait another 15 minutes with my kids. At this point I was at least 1 hour and 15 minutes away and Paul was an hour away.
That’s when Paul had a genius idea. He contacted our neighbour who has 3 children, 2 older boys and a girl Faith’s age. As it turns out, the oldest boy was able to run up the road and pick up Aaron and Faith and take them to their apartment.
When Paul got there about 45 minutes later they were all happy and playing and pretty much unaware of the crisis.
I’m not sure what we would have done without our amazing neighbours. We took them some yummy donuts as a thank you and from now on, Aaron will have a key to our apartment just in case they need to walk home from school. I’ve said before how hard it is not having immediate family close by but I can say that our neighbours and friends are a huge part of a village that is raising our children.
Two months of school vacation is almost over! At one point I really really didn’t think we would make it through in one piece.
But here we are, a day away from the new school year.
Last night we had the kids orientation meetings.
Faith has moved from her small kindergarten (Gan – גן) to the equivalent of Grade R or Grade 0. And she is now going to the same school as Aaron. Quite a few of the kids from her Gan have also moved to the new school and there are a few kids from other kindergartens that are joining them. There are about 25 children in her class. Her teacher seems really sweet and friendly.
When we got there the children had to colour in an apple (or a pomegranate, I’m not sure, its the first project for Rosh Hashanah) with their name on it and the parents had to write a note for the kids on a little cut out of a dove that will be given to them when school starts. Then all the kids went into the main classroom with the teacher and she read them a story about starting school. When that was finished the children had to go and find their lockers and look inside. Inside each locker was a note from the teacher wishing them luck and a sucker. Really really sweet. By the time the 45 minutes were up, Faith was quite comfortable and had picked out the friends she knew from before and made a few new ones.
A bit later we went to Aaron’s meeting in his new classroom. We were supposed to bring his stationery with but something got lost in translation. Oops. One of his friends shared his though so that was good. It seems that all the kids from his 1st Grade class move up to 2nd grade in the same class, which for our anxious boy is a good thing as he doesn’t have to make all new friends again. Speaking of anxious, he is already starting to worry about the new class and the new teacher (who is very sweet) and the work he will have to do. We have tried to explain that he will be fine, that he knows all the kids and that he knows the alphabet and the math that he needs to know. I’m sure he will settle quickly. The teacher was very sweet, when she had them all sitting she asked them who had a sore tummy (which is one of Aarons anxiety symptoms) and quite a few kids put their hands up. I think its a great way for the kids to see that they are not alone.
He was quite excited when he got home. They both were. I think they like the idea that they are going to the same school too.
So school starts tomorrow. I’m not sure who is more excited/anxious/nervous/happy, me or the kids!
My typical weekday (Sunday – Thursday*)** goes something like this…
05:30 ~ 06:30 – Aaron wakes up.
05:51 – My first alarm goes off.
06:00 – Paul’s alarm goes off (usually he has actually already gotten out of bed).
06:00 ~ 07:25 – Paul gets ready for the day, sorts out the kids with breakfast, kids get dressed and mess around.
This is from the beginning of the year. I cant get over how much they have both grown since then 🙂
06:01 – My snooze alarm goes off.
06:10 – I get out of bed.
06:10 ~ 06:30 – I get dressed, brush teeth, brush hair, wake Faith up (she is totally my child, hates waking up), give copious hugs and kisses to family.
06:30 – Leave the house to walk to the bus stop (about half a km walk).
06:40 ~ 06:50 – Wait for my bus, obsessively check the app to make sure I haven’t missed it.
06:45 ~ 07:15 – Play games on my phone or catch a cat nap on the bus ride to work.
07:15 – Unlock office (I’m usually, but not always, the first one in) and turn on the coffee machine before booting up my computer and settling in.
07:30 ~ 08:00 – Paul drops the kids at their respective schools (both within a 200m walk from home) on his way to the train station. From September this will be a whole lot easier since Faith will be attending the same school as Aaron.
07:30 – 13:00 – Work, drink coffee, work, drink more coffee and occasionally a cup of 5 Roses tea. Sometime before 11:00 I order lunch (we are given a budget for the month and can order from a variety of places that will deliver to us).
13:00 ~ 13:30 – Join the rest of the office in the dining area and enjoy lunch.
Love the concentration tongue!
13:30 ~ 16:10/17:30 – Work and drink more coffee. Depending on the day, I either leave the office at 16:10 to catch a bus back home in order to fetch the kids from after care by 16:45. On the days that our babysitter fetches the kids, I work later to make up some time and usually leave the office at around 17:30 to catch a bus home.
16:10/17:30 ~ 16:30/18:00 – Bus ride home.
16:30/18:00 ~ 19:00/19:30 – Fetch kids/get home, do a load of laundry (not every day), play with kids, wash dishes, read my book, bath kids (Aaron has now discovered showering on his own, when the hell did he grow up?), start supper, set table, hang laundry if applicable, clean floors or vacuum if necessary, make a salad so we get some fresh veggies in our diet.
19:00/19:30 – Paul gets home and we eat supper.
20:00 – Kids brush teeth and get ready for bed, story is read, debate over which parent puts which child to sleep.
20:15 ~ 21:00 – Put kids to sleep. This takes so long because Aaron is a chatterbox and needs to get all the words out before he can sleep. Once a child is asleep, that adult then baths/showers, followed by the other adult when the 2nd child (Aaron) eventually falls asleep. Dishes from dinner are washed in between all of this by whoever is free.
21:00 ~ 22:00 – We usually watch at least one episode of a show we are watching, at the moment we are re-watching Firefly, Netflix is awesome!
22:00 ~ 22:30 – Wash up any leftover dishes from dinner and Paul usually sorts out the kids lunches/snacks for the next day.
22:30 – Get ready for bed.
22:45 – Collapse in a heap, possibly read a chapter or two of a book or play on Twitter/FB.
23:30 – Fall asleep, sometimes earlier, sometimes later but this is the average.
And that’s our normal weekday.
*Fridays are slightly different because neither Paul or I work on a Friday and the kids finish school at 12:30ish. So Paul and I clean the apartment or go do a big grocery shop while the kids are at school and then we fetch them and spend the afternoon playing and getting ready for Shabbat.
**Saturdays are spent at the park or watching movies (again, thanks Netflix), there is no public transport and most if not all stores are closed.
Aaron is an anxious child. He really doesn’t like new places or situations and takes a few days to settle into a new routine.
This week both kids are at a new camp. Its small and intimate, about 8 kids, in the camp mothers house. We thought that since the kids would be together, Aaron’s anxiety would not be so bad. We also decided that maybe having a way to communicate with us if he needed to would help him be more settled. So we bought a ₪150 (R500) Nokia ‘dumb’ phone (it makes calls, sends sms and has a radio) and added him to our cell contract for an additional ₪10/month, which gives him a set number of minutes and sms.
I adore these men!
We told him the phone is for emergencies and he must only use it if he really really needed us.
On Sunday I received 10 calls from him. After having a chat about wasting the minutes and not having them when you really need them, I only received 6 calls yesterday. I’m hoping that they have settled in today and I don’t get any calls but I will probably get at least 3…
I’ve lamented the fact that these summer holidays are too bloody long. And bloody expensive when it comes to summer camps. The kids went to camp for the first 4 weeks (July) which is standard in Israel. The camps were run at their schools and were coordinated by the local municipality. August is another story. The only camps available are private. Unfortunately we were not really prepared and we could only get the kids into a camp for the second week in August which meant that the kids and I had Mom Camp last week.
Morning Cat – by Paul
It also happened to be the hottest week in Israel, ever! So we pretty much stayed home in the air conditioning for 5 solid days.
The kids played on the computer, watched Netflix, played ‘Zombie Apocalypse’, had a friend over, Aaron was sick, I got sick, we went to Jerusalem with Roro on Tuesday, played with Lego but mostly we imitated sloths.
I think by the time Friday rolled around the kids were a little bored of being cooped up all day. We went to the large grocery store and did our monthly shop and then took the kids to the municipal pool in the afternoon. They love the pool and I have to admit its pretty awesome, spotlessly clean, plenty space, changing rooms, umbrellas, chairs and tables available, a kiosk with drinks and snacks and ice creams. Whats not to like?
Saturday we put the little buggers to work cleaning the apartment, or their rooms at least. And then we slothed some more in the afternoon.
This morning they went to their new camp. They were pretty excited to go since they are together for the week and its also an English speaking camp which they find very exciting. I think they were mostly excited just to leave the apartment!
I adore my kids, I really really do but I really really missed work and was super grateful to come back today.
So the kids have been on holiday for a month (or close to it) and we are surviving.
They have each been at separate day camps and have been having a blast. Each camp was held in their schools so it was a familiar environment and the other kids were all friends of theirs.
That is until the middle of last week when Aaron’s camp was condensed into a camp located at another school down the road. Suddenly it was a new environment and none of his friends were going to that camp. And we landed up with a small anxiety issue.
I had forgotten how bad Aaron’s anxiety had been when we first arrived and he started school. He was overwhelmed by all the new sights and sounds and the new people. For a good few weeks he complained about having a headache or a tummy ache or both. With a lot of patience from us and his teachers he overcame the anxiety and made new friends and settled in.
Last week he suddenly had a headache and tummy ache again. But we talked to him and discussed it and allowed him to phone us at work for a chat when it got too much. Today he went off to camp without a backwards look, he hasn’t called once and seems to have settled in nicely.
*Photo by Paul
I keep saying it, but I really am so very very proud of this child. All the things he has overcome this year are enough to put an adult in a spin and yet he is a champ, he keeps on keeping on.
Next week the kids will be at home with me and the following week we found a private camp that will take both of them for the week and then Nana (my mom) comes for a two week visit. We are all so excited to see her. The kids cant stop talking about her visit. I’m doing a happy jig as I type!
I cant believe we are half way through the summer holidays and that there is only one month left to go.
