Too much

I made a mistake yesterday, which led to meltdown on my part, at the end of the day. After that promising 'outdoor Arabic', I was encouraged to do everything else that we had talked about. I should have been wise about it, and not try to do everything at once.

I was only supposed to handle N's Quran reading, with the tafseer, but since hubby hasn't been doing the reading with S and H, I did it with them, with tafseer. At the time, it wasn't overwhelming, but at the end of the day, the repeat of nursing Baby Z for one hour, only to have him fresh and alert at the end of the hour led to my outburst.

I felt like I was doing everything, and even that, I wasn't even handling the memorization bit of the Quran with the kids. Meltdown description? Well, let's just say I retreated to my air-conditioned room, under the covers, while Baby Z screamed his lungs off, S and H sulked over their quarrel (which combined with Baby Z's reluctance to sleep, eventually led to my frayed nerves being lighted up), and N took in everything in her own stride. Hubby came home from the masjid to Baby Z's wails, and thought the kids were playing with him.

"Don't play with Z anymore. Go to sleep!"

I guess, it was only until he noticed that I was missing did he realize that something was amiss.

"Is Ummi mad?" he asked the kids.

After brooding on this, I remembered this mistake I had once also done before; doing tafseer with all of them. I had told myself, to learn from that mistake, and only do tafseer with one of them, and have the others listen. I can still recall the difficulties of scheduling lessons with the kids when Baby Z was younger, because of his nursing schedule. I had tried nursing him while teaching the kids, but that had robbed him of his much needed sleep. So I moved to the room, nursing him there till he falls asleep, but he always takes an hour to nurse before falling asleep. I couldn't train him to fall asleep by himself because of his eczema and allergies. When he starts scratching, that's it, I'm back to square one.

I had told the kids,

"The Prophet sallallaahu alayhi wasallam said that the best deed is that done continuously even if little. So the best deed is not necessarily someone praying 20 rakaah at night, but only that one night, but maybe praying 2 rakaah each night, but every night."

I explained to them how the best deed is not one that is done the most, but one that is done with consistency, and further explained to them why I had cut down their Quran reading to half a page per person (except for S) instead of a full page (to save me from burnout and stopping it altogether).

"But you read many pages when you were small," said H, reminding me of what I had told them of my childhood Quran reading experiences.

My Ustaz wouldn't tell me how much I would be reading each time, but would just tell me to read until he felt it was enough.

"Yeah, I sure did."

I couldn't come up with any explanations or elaborations.

Now, thinking back, I could probably have said,

"But he wasn't doing everything. Right now, I am."