Birthdays, Tests, Maccabiah and Dinner

The title of the post is an indicator as to how busy our day was today! First, we had Eli's birthday party at Gan Frieda. Since his birthday is in August and there is no gan then, he had his party now. David, Simon and I all went, despite Frieda hinting to us that we maybe shouldn't come since Eli gets a little freaked out and shy when he has an audience at gan. But, I didn't want him to feel like everyone else had their parents/siblings at their birthday parties and why didn't he. So we went. He was VERY excited about it this morning and all the way to gan in the car he kept saying "we going to my yom yom huledet!" Simon and I dropped him at gan and told him we'd be back soon for the party. Then I took Simon with me to sign him up for the city-run camp for the last 2 weeks of August. Simon wanted to know if the lady who took our information was going to be the teacher.
We picked up David who had gone to work for an hour and we went to Eli's party. He participated more than he did at his end of the year party (which doesn't say much). But he would only do things if David did them with him. That made for some good pictures/video (I'll put the videos in a separate post)! After the festivities when Frieda told the kids to all go sit on the rug so they could set up the tables for the food, Eli ran off with his friends and was much more himself. And he went willingly to stand with Frieda to blow out the candles on his cake.
Simon and I left shortly after that because he had a 10:30 appointment. Months and months ago, when he first started school this year, his teacher, Smadar, told me that she thought he might have fine motor skills issues and she wanted me to get him tested. She had to fill out a form and i had to fill out a form and the pediatrician had to fill out a form and then I had to send all that in to some office. I did that in November and heard nothing until May when David and I had a meeting with a social worker and then she scheduled an evaluation for Simon. It's been rescheduled 3 times and he finally had it today. Luckily, he doesn't really have any issues or it would have been pretty terrible for him to have gone through an entire school year before they could get their acts together and get him evaluated!! I guess if I thought he needed help I could have tried to move things faster, but I was not impressed with the process. I was, however, very impressed with the doctor who we saw today. She was amazing. Simon sat right down and was happy to talk to her and play with her. I just sat there in complete awe listening to Simon chatter away with her in Hebrew. This was the beginning of their conversation (note that it was completely in Hebrew, I'm just translating):
Dr. Peres: Where were you born
Simon: in America
Dr. Peres: Have you been in Israel for a long time?
Simon: Yes.
Dr. Peres: Were you a baby when you came here?
Simon: No, I was 3.
I was surprised to find that he does have a concept of time and that he knows how old he was when we came here!
At one point, she was putting out blocks and asking him how many there were (she was clearly doing a general overall evaluation and not just fine motor skills)-first she did 5 and then 10 and then 13. There were 10 out and she added 3 and asked him how many there were. He said in Hebrew "that's easy, I can do that without counting them all again." She said great, how many are there? Then he was silent. I knew immediately that he couldn't remember how to say 13 in Hebrew. I didn't know whether I was supposed to be remain silent but I couldn't stand the thought of him having to pretend that he didn't know an answer just because he couldn't say it in Hebrew. And I know that he separates the languages and if he's in a situation where he thinks he's supposed to be speaking in Hebrew, he will not speak in English at all (and vice versa). So finally I said "Simon, do you know the number in English?" He nodded and she told him he could say in English so he immediately said 13. Then she told him if he didn't know something in Hebrew he could answer in English. A few times he had to do that and a few times she asked him something in Hebrew and he had to ask her what it meant. But then she was asking him a whole bunch of questions and he was answering them and I had no clue what either of them were saying!! I think it was pretty basic things, like what different animals do, but I couldn't follow it. I was just glad that Simon mostly knew what she was saying.
In the end, she said his fine motor skills are within the range for his age and he just needs practice. She said he can go to an occupational therapist if we want just to get some guidance on how to best have him practice, etc.
She said his communications skills are good, he just clearly sometimes has trouble thinking of the word in Hebrew but that will get better as his vocabulary grows. She said he speaks in very basic sentences and asked if he can speak more sophisticatedly in English, which of course he can. She said it's not a concern then, that it is just a vocabulary issue.
Anyway, since he behaved so well during his test, I took Simon to the toy store after and he got a new dump truck that unfortunately makes a lot of noise. Then because I behaved so well, Simon took me to the shoe store and picked out a pair or sandals for me that were on sale.
We got home shortly before Marcia got here with Eli and I worked while the kids played with Marcia. She and I were talking right before she left and the kids were playing really nicely together so she didn't want to interrupt them to say goodbye so she just went to the door. She was halfway out the door when suddenly Simon yelled "wait...Marcia are you leaving?" She said yes and he came running and gave her a huge hug and kiss.
It was after 6pm and Eli was already in pj's but David was home already and we decided to take the kids to Herzliya to watch Israel vs. Great Britain in Netball as part of the Maccabiah Games. Our friend Andi is on Israel's team . We still don't get the rules of the game--some sort of weird variation of basketball but it was fun to watch and the kids were excited. In the middle of the 3rd quarter Eli started saying that he wanted to go home so we decided to leave. I was starving and I realized that we hadn't actually given the kids dinner so we asked them if they wanted to go to a restaurant or go home and they picked restaurant. We went to Columbus in Herzliya which is similar to TGIFridays in ambiance and decor. And they have computers at each table so Simon was happy because he got to play games. We ordered kids' hamburgers for the kids and discovered there was absolutely no difference between their "kids burger" and my regular burger other than the price. Weird. Our waiter asked if we were celebrating a birthday and we said yes, Eli's! So they quieted down the entire restaurant and did some sort of ceremony with a wooden rooster on our table (complete with the waiter explaining that this particular rooster is not considered idolatry) and lots of singing. Eli was not particularly interested in all this fuss.
We finally got home after 9 with 2 little boys begging to go to sleep. Nice!!