Boy, posting daily is great!

Okay, fine, I cheated. I backdated posts. But in fairness to me, I thought I had posted when in fact I'd saved a post to drafts. Oh well. I should get points for trying, right?

News of the day:

1. Barak is reading much better. I just got some new books for him, courtesy of Shanna, one of which he'd never seen before. (Fire Cat. Very cute. Recommended.) A new book is always a great motivator and he plowed through the whole thing, all three chapters, mostly on his own--I helped a little here and there but the light bulb over his head is really going on. I love that.

2. I got a call from Barak's school today and it was the secretary, telling me that his hours had been approved. This is a HUGE BIG DEAL. He is supposed to get three hours a week of tutoring time from the Ministry of Education as a new oleh. The way this works is that the ME is supposed to approve the funding, release the funding to the school, and then the school hires and schedules a teacher. Great! Except that in practice, they don't have enough money for all the new olim so this only happens if you know about it, ask for it, and push for it. It's been four months since school started. It was approved today. The good part though is that it's retroactive, meaning he will get extra hours for the rest of the year. Which he needs. Not sure when this will start--whenever they hire someone, I think.

I'm impressed with his school. Really. The principal is ehrlich, the teachers are nice, the boys seem nice too. But Barak is quiet and well behaved and that he is not catching on is not causing a problem to anyone but him. It's not unique to any school that the quiet kids don't get attention--it's just reality when there are 25 kids and 1 teacher. So when I ran into his rebbe at the bakery on Friday and he told me, "He's a great kid, really great, and it's impressive that he can sit quietly for that long. But I feel that he is not with us." The principal told me the same thing yesterday. "He doesn't bother anyone else, they don't bother him, but he's in a cloud." He said look, he'll learn Hebrew, that's not an issue, but he needs help so he learns it without falling behind. Which is true.

3. Avtalyon is... I'm sort of afraid to say it lest I jinx something. So maybe I'll just say that it might have been an error of judgment on my part to buy three packs of diapers in size 4+ when they were on sale a couple of weeks ago. Because he hasn't been needing them for a week or two.

4. Iyyar has been challenging lately. He had a fever off and on this week and has just been massively cranky. And cranky in ways that reeeeeeally push my buttons. Alisha has been here most of the evening and is reassuring me at intervals that I am exceptionally patient. Like, me yelling from the bathroom where I am wrestling Avtalyon off Iyyar as they fight for supremacy on the toilet, "Alisha? What did you say about me a little while ago?" Yelled back from office where she was winding my yarn: "You're really really patient!" "Thanks!'

5. Shanna and her family visited. This was fun, despite the craziness here and the indescribable craziness of her journey here. Also despite the fact that my life is such that I can't ever do anything and I spent most of her visit at home with sick children/on the phone with clients/frustrated instead of out doing fun stuff or, you know, spending time with them. Her kids continue to be small, spookily verbal and unsettlingly blue-eyed. Her kids and my kids had fun together, and much cheese was had by all. Oh, and pad Thai. She brought me pad Thai. It was wonderful. Everyone should have some.