Creating memories

She giggles as I finish counting to 10 and start 'searching' for her.

I've been playing this game a long time, I'm quite a pro.

"Hmmm, where could she be? Is she in the kitchen?"

I hear a tiny voice say 'No'.

Haha. She does not know how this game works.

"Hmmm... is she under the table?"

'No!'

Big smile on my face.

"Is she upstairs...?"

'Noooo'.

"Ah! Here you are! I found you!!".

She laughs. Her turn to look for me. I make it pretty easy. I hide on my bed with the covers over my head. She finds me right away. She doesn't shriek. She just stares at me.

Wherever I hide, she hides there right after she finds me. Where's the challenge in that?

So, I make it interesting. I pretend that I don't see her, as she follows me around, and keeps saying, "I'm here!". I tap her on the head and say, 'Excuse me little girl, have you seen RL?'. She says, "I'm here!". So I laugh and say, "Ohhhh you hid so well I couldn't find you!"

The best part of the game was when I hid her under the table and told her my brother was going to look for her so she should be very quiet. To which she responded (while in hiding) "Okay!"

We all had a good laugh.

She wanted me to hold her hand when she went down the slide, even though she insists that she is a 'big girl'. My gorgeous niece just turned 3 this Pesach. She doesn't need help putting on her shoes. She doesn't need help feeding herself. She laughs when I push her on the swing and says 'higher, higher!'.

But when I see her scared look as she sits on the top of the slide, and she says to me, "Hold me..." I hold her hand tight and catch her at the bottom.

When she leaves, I give her a big hug even as she squirms to get away. Every time I make a kissy noise she copies me. And when she wanted chocolate, even though she knows her parents will say no, she says, "Maybe someone could give me chocolate?" And we all laugh cuz she is so sneaky. When she wants something and she knows she can't have, she looks at it curiously and says, "What's that?" And my sister tells me, she knows very well what that is, she just had one of them.

Smart kid.

Pesach is all about family, and sometimes I can't stand mine. And sometimes home is the only place I feel comfortable, on a second day of yom tov when my makeup has rubbed off and I don't feel like going outside. When we fight about nothing and everything, and my father has to make shower times so everyone gets a turn, and everyone is screaming, and instead of helping I hide out in my room on the computer and say I'm helping by not getting in the way. And when everyone is eager to have chometz right after pesach and I am perfectly content with fruity pebbles.

When I was in high school and the end of yom tov meant going back to school I would dread it every time. But now it means going back to my own room in my apartment, back to work, back to my busy schedule. I am looking forward to it. Because it's a life I created and one where I belong.

It's 5 am and I have to get up in 4 hours to go back 'to life'. That's how it seems. This is my home, except I'm never here. And that's perfectly fine with me. Except I miss the quiet, I miss 5 am from my old life when it was okay to stay up the whole night because I had no obligations the next day.

But I can't wait to go home and unpack. It'll feel good to get back into a normal routine, and detox. I'm so sick of food.

Goodnight/ Good morning to all.