#ThTh: Thank you to Raheli the Ganenet

The Ganenet is the nursery teacher at DD's nursery (gan in Hebrew). Our Ganenet is Raheli and we love her because she is the best Ganenet in the whole of Israel. This isn't an official statistic - just my opinion.

Thank you Raheli for taking DD aside and teaching her how to wait without crying until it is her turn. And then teaching me how to reinforce this at home.

Thank you for recognising that DD likes to be the boss 'in charge' of something and helping her to play this role a little every day. Thank you for helping DD give out her little bag of salty snacks - one each to each of the other children, when she arrives at gan in the morning. Thank you for letting her go around to each of the children on their mattresses at nap time and tell each one that it's time to go to sleep now, before returning to her own mattress and lying down.

Thank you for taking all the heart-shaped, pre-cooked dough for biscuits that the children had, with runny noses and sticky fingers, rolled, cut out and placed on baking trays - throwing them away and making a new batch of biscuits to give to the parents at the Family Day party. Everyone enjoyed eating the biscuits which the children thought they had made :)

Thank you for teaching DD Hebrew and sometimes translating for her to make sure she understands.

Thank you for loving the children and for the hugs and kisses they receive in abundance. DD running into gan every day, eager to get into the day's activities and be with her friends, is the most wonderful thing to see each morning.

Thank you for the emails and the photos you regularly send us. You and Linda are far better photographers than I am. Thanks to you, I now have a full album of DD photos to keep for her and to share with the family.

Thank you for assuring me that you will know when it is time to toilet-train DD and that we will do it together.

Thank you for all the love and advice.

Thank you Raheli.