Kids and Catch-ups

The house is oh so quiet - kids are asleep, Hidai is still at work, and the windows are closed so I can't hear the sounds of defeat from the last Arsenal lousy match.
I spent the last 45 minutes reading back to try and understand where I left everything... So much is missing and so little has changed that I am not really sure how to close the gap. Looking at it now, I feel very badly about not being vigilant enough or obsessive enough with the Blog that it got to a point that I know I will forget some of the things I wanted to write about or that they will no longer be relevant...
But since regrets usually gets you nowhere, and such is life, I will ignore the fact that this is my fault and just try to fix it.
So what are we missing?

• Grandparents visit
• Jewish food, stores and TV shows
• Baking - mine, TVs, and Laura's crazy Join British Bake Off idea :)
• Family dinner and getting close to Jo & Adrie
• Kids life

I think that's all. Easy peasy like they say (if they are under 10 years old).
I want to finish it all by the end of this week since next week is Halloween and with it - half term, which means both kids at home for around 10 days, and also, Halloween at our house means one thing - singing pumpkin (you probably ask yourself - WHAT WAS I THINKING last year when I bought a singing pumpkin?! Well I was thinking - it's s cute and Yon would LOVE it. Unfortunately he does).

You know, because we were talking about Halloween and because I am just so damn proud - My first pumpkin!

Each of these points deserves a separate post, and so it easiest to begin with the kids catch ups (not sure it actually works in English, but they do play a lot of catch these days so it does seem appropriate).
It amazes me everyday how well and how fast the kids have adjusted to living here. Kids are amazing creatures (so I wanted to write amazing monsters. Don't judge me), and although I know they didn't really have a choice and they have to adjust for survival, I still find it awe-inspiring how they do it so seamlessly. Like they've been here all their lives. We actually chose to be here, and still it takes us so much longer to feel like we belong...

Kids in action

Yon, or JonJon, or Joanty as he is now fond of calling himself :) (because it took the nursery teachers some time to get used to JonJon. I don't know why since I didn't think it's that strange of a nickname, but Hidai said maybe it's better that he will be taken more seriously and be called by his given name. But seriously? Yon? he is the least serious person I know... So by now he made sure everyone knows to call him JonJon) is having the time of his life in nursery which in our huse is called JonJon School, because he is no longer a baby and he wants to go to school like Ron! He is so lucky to have a teacher that is all for messy play, because as Adrie pointed out to me - he is a tactile child, and wherever he goes he has to touch EVERYTHING. Drives me crazy sometimes (okay most of the times) but that is who he is, so we embrace it and send him to school. He is the only child in his nursery that goes home at 12:00, which was a huge surprise to us - both in where we lived in Israel and in Gibraltar most of the kids go home around noon. It never even crossed my mind that it can be any different. It took us a while (3 days) after discovering this fact, to go check how much it will cost us to have hime stay until 3:30 for most of the week. After 2 unpleasant talks with the unpleasant receptionist (I guess she isn't really a receptionist, but she does sit in reception) to discover that it is a valid option if we want to add 240 pounds to the 24 we are already paying to have him start at 9 and not 10 on Thursdays (still can't get over the fact that they stole 1 hour from us and we have to pay for it). So, 240 Pounds to have him eat lunch and take a nap? We did take like 3 minutes to think about it, but decided to invest them in more important things like Christmas gifts :)
I used to think Ron is the friendliest kid I know with his ability to befriend kids wherever he goes and have girls run after him. But Yon is unbelievable. Truly he is. He has most of the kids in Ron's class play with him every morning, and when it's time for them to go into school he has a goodbye ritual with all of them :). He is the same in his nursery (except that there he has to share sometimes...). This week when we bumped into a friend of his from nursery, Daniel, they started hugging and kissing like crazies :) so he has a birthday party invitation for sometime in November and we are hoping we'll get to know a few of the parents and can start organising some playdates for him because we never get to meet the other parents (because he is the only one finishing at 12) and I think he will enjoy it (I am sure I will enjoy it a bit less).
Thanks to Yon, we also had the pleasure of finding out how the NHS system works, and although it takes some time to actually manage and schedule an appointment, we took Yon to his first London eye check in Moorfields Hospital, and after 5 hours, 3 tests, 4 doctors and eye drops, were left with the diagnosis that the vision in his bad eye is better and the vision in his good eye is worse, because he would not cooperate in the first test - thew one in which he has to say what he sees. And the reason he wouldn't cooperate was because we had the worst ever person doing the test. She was so un-child friendly (or un-adult friendly) so he got really stubborn and would not budge. It didn't matter that he did everything else beautifully and was very cooperating. So now we have to take him to a new test in which they will test the back and bottom of his eyes to see how much he is using his eye, and if this test comes out fine then we don't have to worry so much if he doesn't want to cooperate for a while. They were all (except the one) very nice, and the Hospital is done beautifully and very much with children in mind. We also got a free pair of glasses because yon's were a year old and were too small for his head (I am telling you, he isn't even 3 and a half and already wearing 4-5 clothes...). So it took 4 more weeks to get this new appointment, but we now managed to have half of the appointment booked for the 18th of December.
Ron, who always stays Ron (or Ronchuk, but it does not work in English. Or outside the house) started an Arsenal football after school activity that I managed to find after a very very long search... He is enjoying it and together with school football he has at least twice a week of playing, but I have to say that it astounds me how less serious they take kids football here than in Gibraltar. It could be a London thing but there you have it - it is not serious enough. And I know that I sounds like one of those pushy mums but it frustrates me because when the football isn't serious than you don't get all the good things organised team sports are supposed to give you, and you are left with the idiotic thing of everyone wanting to score and nobody is passing. This Monday when they were playing, Ron took the ball very cleanly and nice) from another kid, who in return tackled him in a very ugly way while he was running, so Ron fell very hard straight on the floor on his face. It was a red card kind of offence. So do you think anyone took the time to teach the kids that this is NOT the way to play football? Or at least threw the kid off the pitch? No. Of course not. It's infuriating. It took me a logt time to calm Ron down, see that he still has all of his teeth and send him back out there. So no. I don't like how they teach or how they play, but I am only the mum. And football is a dad thing (and unfortunately it's on Mondays. The only day Hidai can't leave work early). Next week because it's half-term there is a different activity with a different coach in a different place (2 buses more than half an hour each direction kind of place), so I am thinking we will use Hidai's 2 days at home to take him there. Maybe it will be better...
The football at school is no better. Well, after we complained to the head teacher about the whole after-school activity thing it did get better, but only just. I don't get it. The school is great, really great, but the after school sucks. Well actually Ron loves it and won't stop going (he can because you only pay until half-term and then re-evaluate), but I was expecting a bit more than playing the computer, but I guess that is wh Ron likes it since at home he doesn't play on the computer in the afternoons... The school itself is great, though it is funny sometimes to see the difference a perspective makes - they are studying the pyramids and ancient Egypt at school. So I told Ron, you know, the Jews built the pyramids. Cause they did. It's a known thing. They were slaves in Egypt and built the Pyramids, and that is why we have Passover - going from slavery to freedom. Everyone knows that. And then I went to check it online... Well apparently the Jews did not in fact built the Pyramids. And might not even been in Egypt at all. And the whole Passover story is, well, a story. Oops. Never even crossed my mind that it could be. So I went back to Ron and said, well, you know how we talked about Jews building the Pyramids? Let's just say that it's a Jewish beliefe and not go tomorrow to school and tell everyone that's what happened...
We had the same thing with the creation of the world this week, though I did go straight to the Big Bang Theory (which on knew only as that really funny show we watched together...) and didn't do the whole God thing. Now that I think about it though I should because he will not learn it in school...
I have to say though that the curriculum is very good, and though I do think they can still advance him more in maths and science, they managed to interest him in the other subjects enough to write a made-up story of his own (a great great great accomplishment), they also have film club on Fridays and book club in which they are doing a guided reading of Narnia (we have it at home, but if you'd ask me I would probably say he is too young. So I guess it's good nobody asked). And the latest is that he joined the school choir, mainly because he wants to sing Christmas songs in the snow :) but also because apparently he likes singing. Who knew?
So he is loving school, has made lots of friends in his class, and has a BFF in Tyler (Even though I did ask Ron how to sell it, I am still not sure...), who after Ron nagged me for 2 month, and after I scrunched up enough courage to go talk first to his grandma because she is usually the one who takes him to / from school, and after a very very chilly response (not sure why but she does not seems to like us much), and then to his mum (talked to her 3 times now! So proud of myself. I know it sounds silly, and maybe it is, but you have to understand that nobody talks to us in school, and that, well, it's me. I hate conversing with people), will come to our house on Friday. It's the first friend Ron has over, since we moved here and since he is sharing a room with Yon. I really hope it goes well. I do have high expectations because Tyler is a really nice kid, and he also likes Yon, and I am really hoping we can finally have someone to talk to about life and school things here...

I guess that's it for kids things. In accordance with the baking craze going around our house and the UK and with the holiday season upon us we made Halloween baking this week - Halloween shortbread cookies (it's an Israeli / mine version. Not really shortbread, but for lack of another word) which the kids actually helped making (it did help that the cookie cutters are huge and the whole thing was done in under an hour, and also that Hidai was there to stop me from being too critical) and Yon took to nursery (huge success. He is so depressed he doesn't have more to bring), and Halloween cupcakes for Ron, who wanted chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing cupcakes (and although I did try, very hard, to change his decision and do something more interesting, refused flatly. Not even vanilla cupcakes, or orange icing.) so where is the Halloween you ask? well, they are sitting in a Halloween themed cup and have a tiny sugar-paste decoration on top, that Ron put himself and so was very proud of himself for making the cupcakes ;).

Yon's Halloween cookies (biscuits?)

Ron decorating the thousand cupcakes he took to class