She's a little too much like me

On Wednesday night, just after Ivy told Rachel she needed time to do some homework and eat dinner, we came home and I was getting ready to prepare our dinner -- got out the ingredients for popovers to accompany leftover meatloaf, put on my apron -- and Rachel was sitting at the dining room table eating a snack, when all of a sudden she took my hand, led me into the living room, made me sit down on the couch and arranged the pillows around me. Then she went up to our bedroom, brought down a book called "Washington" I'm reading, a biography of George Washington, and put it in my lap. "REST, Mommy," she said. "REST. Then we're going to have a quick Mommy cuddle and walk over to Ivy's." When I tried to protest and say I needed to start dinner, she repeated, "REST, Mommy. REST."

Resting lasted longer than I planned, Drew called soon after and said he was on the way home from the train station, and so I told Rachel it was too late to go over to Ivy's. She pitched a fit, ran upstairs and yelled at herself for being "stupid." When I tried to comfort her and say it wasn't her fault, that I could have done a better job of reminding her about time (she complained at Ivy's that she didn't want to go home and set the table, and she took her time about doing it when we came back -- something we need to work on), she would have none of it. "I'm STUPID. I told you to rest, and it took too looong," she sobbed. I hugged her and tried to explain that she shouldn't be so hard on herself, that the world will punish her enough.

She got over it by dinnertime, but it really disconcerted me. Because I'm as hard on myself as she is on herself, and I want to spare her that agony as best I can.