I Wish...

I know I could write right now a long , very long list of things that I wish I'd had in my possesion, things that I wish would happened, of things that I wish I wouldn't have done. But right now, I am thinking, with my selfish mind, "I wish I were rich". And you'll see in a minute what I mean.

Today was Maya's first day at kindergarten. And I cannot say that I am all extatic and happy or that the kindergarten is perfection, or that I have the super well-behaved child. No. Far from it. I was dissapointed and bitter. First of all, the kindergarten is state-owned (here in Israel, the state-owned ones are under the tutelage of the City hall), the building is absolutely tiny and they have 34 kids aged 3-5 years in one room! There are two toilets, one teacher and her helper. Maybe with fewer kids, it would've been OK, more intimate and cosy, I guess.

Oh God, I wish I were rich, to be able to put Maya in a private kindergarten, where the fees are 10 times the ones that we pay now...A private one, what a dream, with less kids, bigger rooms, more light and new toys, the ones that I saw today are ancient! And where the teacher's helper woulnd't dare to wear a vest that showed her belly...Luckily, she didn't have her belly button pierced or I would've taken Maya home the instant I saw her...

I feel so guilty. I feel that I let my baby down, I feel that I didn't do everything in my power to make her really happy. To give her the best start in life...

That's one side of the story. The other side just emphasizes what an idiot of a mother I am...As I said (about a million times now), today was Maya's first day in kindergarten. Her first time ever in the company of so many strangers (kids and grown ups) outside her home. Also, the first time she had to obey somebody else. The kids part was OK, she loves children and she loves to play...The problems appeared when she actually had to sit down and listen to her teacher. She simply refused. She refused to sit down, she wanted to take the teacher's books and props and kept walking after her. In the end, although they asked the parents to step outside, the teacher's helper summoned me to try and control Maya, and she said, with a grin on her face: " Maya is naughty, isn't she?" And that put a cloud over my sun, right there, in the kindergarten's yard.

It was very difficult to convince her to sit and listen. I think it is difficult for her because she doesn't understand everything in Hebrew, at home we speak Romanian and I wanted her to know the language, in order to be able to communicate with the members of my family. She also knows some English and her Hebrew is basic.

Also, she can get a bit over-excited at times. She wants to do everything at once, she wants to know and touch and experience. And then she just enters this state of over-excitement and she's agitated and it is hard to calm her down. I usually take her in my arms and I whisper to her and caress her curls and she calms down...But I know all this because I am her mother and I love her and I'm not sure the teacher will have time to "read" her acuratelly with the other 30 or so kids...

So, my point is: I hate not to be able to give my baby the best of the best...But I am going to do something about it. Not sure what exactly, though, but I'll figure it out...

In the pictures I've posted you can see that Maya is wearing a traditional Romanian blouse, called "ie" (in Romanian, of course).