Hatching

One night last week as I was putting Yaakov to bed, he leaned over and gently poked my belly and asked "When is this going to crack open already so the baby can hatch out of there?"

Ha! The baby was lucky that I didn't crack open right there from laughing so hard!



Anyhow, as Carpool Grandpa has pointed out, conferences came and went with nary a note from yours truly. But before we get to that, I would like to wish a huge Mazal Tov to our precious, handsome, sweet, brilliant and all around super wonderful nephew Jesse on the occasion of his Bar Mitzvah this coming Shabbos! I can't believe that a) he really is that old already and b) we are missing it, but we will be celebrating this momentous occasion along with him and his family from over here! And my super awesome sister in law already sent us the slide show/dvd of all the family pictures that they will play at the Bar Mitzvah, so we will get to enjoy that on Sunday along with them!



So, conferences. Pretty much what I was expecting, actually! Amira's teachers generally all have the same comments in November, that she is so reserved and quiet and they wish she would participate more, but that she is starting to open up more in class. And this year is the same! Her English teacher is a little worried that she is too much of a perfectionist (I wonder where she gets that from?) and was actually surprised to find me outgoing. I told her that I may be outgoing, but I am definitely a perfectionist! Besides for the quietness, though, they both are thrilled with how she is doing, the quality of her work, and how bright she is, thank G-d. Her English teacher loves her writing and her creativity and was surprised when I told her that Amira says her favorite subject is math! When I asked Amira before the conference if there was anything she wanted me to talk to her teachers about, the only thing she mentioned was that she was having trouble seeing the board, particularly in Hebrew, which means that glasses are coming now, rather than later. I don't know why that makes me sad, but it does. We are picking up her prescription today and going to pick out frames on Friday, hopefully. Between that and the missing teeth, she really is starting to look like a big kid! We had her 8 year well visit this week, and she is now exactly 48 inches tall! She is following the exact growth curve that she has been on since she is born- 25% for height and 3rd for weight, so at least she is consistent!
More on the Birthday Girl next week, G-d willing!

As for Yaakov's conferences, they were great! His teacher is really lovely and really enjoys him. She mentioned many times how impressive she finds his "sophisticated vocabulary" and how much he has grown and developed already in the past couple months! She did say that his cutting/scissor skills need work, as does his letter writing skills, but he is young, and young for his class, and for a kid who didn't even recognize any of his letters in the summer to now easily know them all, and be able to write them, is pretty wonderful. I have no doubts that he will catch up! She also said that he is definitely a fidgety little guy, but that he always, always knows exactly what is going on and can answer every single question. This past Friday night at the Shabbos table, we asked him all his Parsha questions, and he answered them all easily and happily. Then we asked Amira her questions, and any time she even hesitated for a second to think about the answer, he quickly chimed in with the (correct!) answer! Yehuda and I were both happily surprised and amused, and Amira was...not so amused or thrilled really. Heh. Thankfully, she was able to go on and answer all the questions from the 3rd and 4th grade list and then even the 5th and 6th grade list, and that made her feel better!