29

Mar

Erev Pesach – Oh, the joys of parenthood!

Posted by   Published in Kids, Personal

Anyone who’s a parent can appreciate this.

I B”H have a beautiful baby daughter, Leah, who’s turning 23 months and is fast approaching her “terrible twos.” Yet, even when she’s mischievous she’s the most adorable thing on earth. Here’s a case in point.

Over the past year, my daughter has developed a taste for Shabbos Challah. Whenever she would spot Challah she’d pipe up in an almost questioning tone “Challah?” Usually that meant that she saw Challah, and she wanted it. She would also say, for “Gut Shabbos,” “Shabbos,” and for “Shabbat Shalom” she would say slowly, though melodically, “♫♪ Sha-lo-mein! ♪♫” These are the things that give us such Nachas.

But then those things can and will be used for terror when we least want it. This year, in preparing the house for Bedikas Chametz, my wife and I took a loaf of bread and cut up golf-ball sized pieces of bread, carefully placing a piece of paper towel underneath each piece in order to mitigate the amount of crumbs being spread. While my wife and I were preparing, we noticed that my daughter took one of the pieces from the living room that were within her reach, paper towel and all, and started scurrying to her bedroom, nearly biting into the piece, while cluching it like it was buried treasure. My wife caught her JUST before little Leah reached her bed. When my wife came back, she and I were holding onto our hearts since the Chametz scare was a close one. All of a sudden, Leah, in a perfectly timed manner, called from her room “♫♪ Challah? ♪♫” The shock plus her absolute cuteness had me rolling on the floor in laughter.

Oh, I almost forgot, Leah now copies everything that we grown-ups do “to a T.” She can now say phrases in English and Hebrew, say “Wazzup!” and even imitate the gob-gobbling of a turkey, since most times she acts like one. Well, now, she copied me and started HERSELF falling on the floor, laughing her ever-cute baby laugh, and then saying “♫♪ funny, Abba! ♪♫”

Does anyone here have any cute pre-Pesach stories to share?

This post was written by

Rafi Hecht – who has written posts on RafiHecht Blog.
Rafi Hecht is a leading SEO Consultant and Web Programmer, currently residing in Toronto. He has been in the IT workforce since 2003, and has focused on Search Engine Optimization and Web programming for more than 3 years. He also is a devoted husband and father. His personal blog can be found at http://blog.rafihecht.com.

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  • Chananel Gez

    Since I’m in my shana rishona, it was the first time I stayed by my in-laws for pesach. My father in law began the bedikas chometz and i followed him around with his candle, trying to find a piece of the 10 hidden chometz pieces. In my family, my mother hides it and then the rest of the family looks with the father. By my in-laws, everyone gets a few pieces to hide and then they all watch as the father struggles to find all the pieces all by himself. They love to scream to him “cold, COLDER, OK warmer, HOT, HOT, HOTTER, YES!!”
    Well, when I found one piece on top of the light fixture and got totally excited and pointed it out to my father-in-law, all my sisters in law started screaming at me, and saying how i am spoiling all the fun! I was shocked since I know its an important thing to do and now I was being told off!!!
    So I stayed away till it was over and in the meanwhile, remembered that there was a big rabbi that would take forever to do bedikas chometz even though his entire house was only one room big. So how come it took him so many hours? Rabbi Yehuda Shmuleuitz explained to us that he would sit down after his bedika and would contemplate about all the aveiros he could think of in order to burn the chometz within himself. So that’s what I did. I sat there in the living room trying to think of all the aveiros I ever did and asked Hashem to forgive me. It was a painful experience but I felt better afterwards nontheless.
    The end of the story goes like this: My sisters-in-law realized they should not have screamed at me for simply trying to do what I thought was prefectly the right thing to do, especially since I was not warned before-hand of their way of doing it. I easily found in my heart to forgive them and we all felt better after that.
    THE END.

  • http://rechovot.blogspot.com The Rebbetzin’s Husband

    Never saw anyone actually roll on the floor in laughter!

    • rhecht

      Then you should have been there!