Yom Kippur

I'm glad we did some tefila prep before Rosh Hashana, because I really didn't get to sit next to Chana in shul much.  The littles were not shul-level quiet (though Elazar sat very quietly for 10 minutes until he began fidgeting loudly enough to disturb daveners).  Bizarrely, there weren't many kids in shul (most went to play at different homes) so my boys didn't have anyone to play with.  Since there wasn't anyone to play with, they came into shul and were hanging out there.  Since my 3yo was talking, we left.

Chana davened silent shemona esrei in shul and heard shofar and then wanted to leave.  And without me there, I was hard pressed to tell her she has to stay in shul herself with nobody to show her pages.  In other years, we've had aunts or cousins who looked out for my daughters in shul.  Not this year.

When I was growing up, I had a good friend a year older than I was, who had a good friend a year older than she was.  And their sisters were a year younger than I was and a year younger than that.  We all were in shul together, copying the girls one or two years older than we were.

For Yom Kippur prep, I was going to go through some of the machzor and show her the different shemona esreis and maybe some of the avoda.  I was thinking a lot about how to handle the shul thing.  Chana doesn't find shul meaningful, doesn't understand most of the tefilos (even with English), and hates it.  I'm not there to guide her.  To prepare, I will go through shacharis shemona esrei with her and make sure she generally knows what to say and has some of the general concepts.  This week, instead of chumash, we'll read Yona together.  On Yom Kippur itself, if we aren't in shul, she agreed to learn the Viduy with me for an hour.  I would also like to do Avinu Malkenu with her.  I think I will forgo the avoda this year and show her the structure of the 5 tefilos and see if we can squeeze in Avinu Malkenu in advance.  On the day, she will daven shacharis shemona esrei only, and we will hopefully learn Viduy.  If I want to be in shul, she will be in charge of the little ones.  (I don't make her watch them all day because she is still young, 13, and not so used to fasting yet, and I don't want her to yell at them from hungry grouchiness as the day goes on and they get rambunctious.)