Chana came to ask me to work with her while I was in the middle of putting Aharon to bed and was about to call my Aunt. As much as I wanted to work with her, I put myself first and said I was talking to my aunt for half an hour. I figured if she pursues me, then fine. Otherwise I'm letting it go. Self care first, since I'm grouchy. Grouchy is usually a signal to me to let everything non-essential go and focus on myself a bit. Chana came back after half an hour, but I was still on the phone. And then that had run over into Jack's bedtime (and really, how was I going to fit working with Chana in between Aharon's bedtime and Jack's bedtime when there wasn't enough time to really do work with her in that time?). So I told Chana to come back after Jack's bedtime.
Frankly, usually after bedtime I'm wrung out and done.
Well, she came. And I had no expectations since I am tired. And it was really very pleasant learning with her from 9:35-10:20. We reviewed yesterday's Ramban, and studied Yaakov's tefila before meeting Eisav, and extracted principles of tefila. We did a rashi or two. It was nice. And then we read some Freud. We didn't do Bio but since I wasn't planning on it, I'm okay with that.
When I went to put Jack to bed, I mentioned to her that after 8pm when I'm starting with bedtime, I get busy, and then I really don't have the energy for working so late at night. She seemed to understand and I'm wondering how it will go if I lay off for a few days and don't approach her to do work, and just let her be in charge of managing her work schedule and coming to me.
This is really continuing a theme that bothered me this morning when I was loading the dishwasher. They'll all unload the dishwasher, but only when I tell them. I tell Elazar, but he wants Chana to do her part first, and she's upstairs, and then I have to remember to tell her when she gets down, and then I forget, etc. I feel like it doesn't happen unless I coordinate it. Same with Chana's schoolwork. I would like to figure out how to ease myself out of the equation and make things more independent.
She suggested double Bio for tomorrow and I told her the limitations of tomorrow's schedule. I'm not going to bring it up to her or ask her to do work tomorrow, and either she'll come to me or she won't. Ball is in her court. (At least for tomorrow ;-)
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my mom, who reads this blog, mentioned that when she babysat, she left the dishwasher door open when it was clean, and that when chana saw they were clean and dry, she emptied it. i am definitely going to try that!
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