Tiny Chair Torture, Contd

This blog is dedicated to a Loyal Reader who wishes to remain Anonymous - we'll just call her "Michal" - who came out of hibernation to email and chastise me for not blogging recently. My apologies to Michal, to all my sisters, real and otherwise, and to the rest of my Loyal Readers.

Some highlights from the third week of school:

1. A strike by the assistant ganenets on Sunday. This meant that gan opened only at 8, not 7:30, when the main ganenet arrived,BUT ONLY ON THE CONDITION that she could find some hapless volunteer parent to assist her and thereby meet the required ratio of 2:3billion in the classroom. And some Abba from our gan was crazy enough to volunteer! I didn't stay long to find out what happened, just ditched the kid and left. (The tzaharon was business as usual because they are private, not run by the city. Also, big kid school wasn't affected, just gan.)

2. The strike ended Sunday night. Yaakov was at gan at 7:32 Monday morning.

3. We had Yaakov's parent orientation thing last night. Two hours + tiny chairs = painful tushy. As I predicted, it was all very mannerly and organized until we hit the hour point, at which time everything the ganenet said became fodder for nuanced discussions, questions, and analysis. EXACTLY what I wanted to be doing at 9:30 at night. They were lucky I came clothed; usually it's pajamas or bust after 4:00.

4. I was the only REAL English speaker at the meeting. The other "English" speakers are those annoying ones who speak perfect English and perfect Hebrew, rolling their "r"s and saying their "w"s as needed. Although when it was my turn to speak about my child, I did manage to make a joke that everyone laughed at (at least I think that's why they were laughing), even if I did also say that Yaakov pushes me on the door (instead of "out of.")

5. Ariella helps the Israeli kids with their homework.

6. Ariella and Yaakov have become our Va'ad of House Hunting. (The search doesn't officially start until acharei hachagim, but I've always liked being early for things.) "This house was good Mommy," was one of Ariella's analyses, "it's close to gan and shul. But the garden is very small. And there are a lot of stairs." Pretty much our thoughts exactly.

7. Random thought: So Yuval HaMevulbal, with whom you are all now familiar, is on ketchup containers. I started to think about the whole putting-famous-kids'-characters-on-food phenomenon. I understand the Wheaties thing, back in the day. Wheaties are healthy. Michael Jordan is cool. Therefore, eat some healthy Wheaties under the beaming gaze of Michael Jordan. Great! And I understand Dora on yogurt. Again, cool character, more or less healthy food (depends on which country). But ketchup? And frozen pizza? Do our kids really need more incentives to eat this stuff? Food companies, let me be straight with you: We're buying the ketchup. And the frozen pizza. Fret not. This conversation never occurs:

"Oh, Yaakov, I know you don't like ketchup. But here, have a piece of broccoli to go with it! And look - Yuval is on the ketchup! Now do you want some?"
Or,
"Donny, I was at the end of my rope. The kids just refused to eat pizza! THANK GOD they now make frozen pizza with YUVAL on it! The kids are just so excited to eat it!"

You get the idea.

End of my random thoughts for the night.