Musings and bedtime Torah

I've got a lot going on in my own mind, which means I'm taking a few days to figure things out and the kids are playing and doing whatever.

First, my schedule is so busy that last night I told Chana to do Chumash with her father.  I think she finished rishon of Pekudei.  I don't know about Chana, but I am definitely getting better at the vocab of the Mishkan.

Second, I've been lax with Elazar.  He's perfectly happy to learn Torah at bedtime, and I fell out of the habit of taking advantage of that.  His Chumash is in a room he doesn't go into very often.  I'm sure if I left it in his room, he would bring it to me more often to learn for 5 minutes.  Two nights ago I decided to talk to him about the 10 dibros.

Interestingly, even without going to preschool, he somehow through osmosis has the idea that "being nice" is a mitzva (that's kind of a pet peeve of mine).  I already told him, earlier in the week, when he asked me to tell him about the mitzva of bikur cholim, that it's a sub-mitzva of "v'ahavta l'reacha kamocha."  I explained that means to love other Jews like you love yourself.  He said there are some people he doesn't love because they are mean.

With the 10 dibros, he was surprised at the concept of the "lav," that a "don't do" is a mitzva.  Don't kill, don't steal...  He was sure that being nice would be one of the 10 dibros.  He was kind of chagrined about "don't steal" and this morning he actually went and returned some tools to a garden a few houses away which he apparently had ransacked.

Last night he was thinking a lot about spitting (he had a phase in the last few months where every time he was unconsciously angry, he would spit, and eventually it evolved into a spit without actual saliva just the noise (yay) and it slowed down, but of course, by then his 2 brothers have imitated it..).  I told him there is a mitzva about spitting.  He was positive the mitzva was "don't spit on people" or "apologize after you spit on someone."  I told him about chalitza.  He's in first grade now, and he's pretty conceptual.