As much as we love Matis and as well behaved as he is, he can get a little crazy when he's stuck at home all day. He loves to be around other kids and when we were in Detroit he loved going to "school" everyday at Akiva. I'm starting Yeshiva this week and Nehama is starting her new job tomorrow iyH (more on both of those soon), so we decided to send Matis to Gan. Fortunately, there's a gan just down the block, which is pretty much in between our apartment and my in-laws and they were able to find room for him.
Unfortunately, they don't speak English at all. We figured it would be ok and Matis would learn Hebrew while we're here, or French.
We took Matis for his first day on Sunday, expecting him to be there from 8:30-4:00. When we walked in the door I was completely overwhelmed, everyone was yelling "shalom, boker tov!" and there was loud music playing and kids dancing all over the place. Matis thought it was hilarious and within minutes he was crawling around the room with little girls chasing after him, trying to squish his cheeks (no joke). The lady in charge, who speaks a bit of English, told us to stay for a half hour and then leave and pick him up a half hour later. Not what we were expecting at all. We talked her into letting him stay for two hours, but they ended up calling us an hour later to pick him up because he was crying when they weren't holding him.
I don't understand what they expect from 13 month old babies. The next day we dropped him off and there was a different teacher there. He was not happy to be there and started screaming as soon as she picked him up, so we stayed and tried to calm him down. All the little kids kept waddling over to try to play with him, but he had no interest. We felt like we were torturing him, leaving him with strange people who don't even speak his language, but the teacher said we should leave and see how it went. He stayed for almost 6 hours and the teacher said he was happy and playing with the other kids all day, but he didn't eat much food (with Tuna and Chummus for breakfast, I don't blame him).
Which brings me to the next interesting thing about this Gan, which is the reason we felt comfortable sending him, they don't allow kids to bring their own food. They have a cook that makes fresh food and they don't give any junk food. Matis unfortunately takes after Nehama and has some food allergies (nuts and carrots, yes I said carrots), so it's good to know there won't be any nuts around him (considering that all the kids here eat bamba all day, this is a big deal). They don't believe he's allergic to carrots and they serve soup with carrots every day, but it's not a serious allergy, so if they forget it will probably just cause him to break out.
With all the noises and dancing going on, we didn't notice at first, but they hardly have any toys for the kids to play with. In Detroit Akiva had so many toys, I wanted to stay and play sometimes. I'm curious to see how they keep the kids happy all day. The only toy Matis had any interest in was the balloons they had all over the place. In Detroit, people looked at me like I was crazy for letting Matis play with a punching balloon while I was watching him closely. Here they laughed when we complained that they were a choking hazard, but they said they'd get rid of them (they didn't).
Going off on a tangent, this is the one thing about Israel that drives me crazy, so far. Parents here let young kids play in the streets and walk to school alone, but yell at me for allowing Matis to crawl on the floor in the store (yes, it's dirty, but we wash him and it's better than having him scream his head off IMO), or for not bundling him in winter clothes in 60 degree weather.
Back on topic, today they made us pick Matis up early because he was making too much noise and waking up the other kids. I thought they meant he was crying, turns out he was just playing too loudly! The nerve of him! I don't know what they're going to do when Nehama starts working and can't just run over there whenever they want to send him home. We're definitely looking into different places to send him, but everyone says this place is so good, maybe we just have to wait it out? The other kids all seem happy, but they also kinda seem like they're in a cult. They all wear sweatpants and sweatshirts every day and walk around like they're really excited to be there. I wonder if the other parents look at us like we're crazy for dressing Matis so stylishly (by stylishly I mean he wears normal baby clothes from Target).
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