100.)

"I found some board games in the cupboard," I said as I toddled down the stairs, holding a few boxes in my arms. I set down the puzzle - one of an autumn forest - and Candyland on the table. "My mom and I played this a lot as a kid," I said, "so I thought it would be a good option."

"That sounds like the perfect after dinner activity," Blossom said. It had been a long time since Blossom had played Candyland, but that almost made the nostalgia more potent. And nostalgia was, as Blossom was discovering, a big part of being Little.

We started the puzzle. It was predictably meditative, and the sounds of Bluey still came through in the background. We did the edges of the puzzle first, as all sane people do, and that was about the time our food arrived at the door. Blossom waited until the car drove away before putting on her coat and picking it up off the porch. Contactless delivery was one of the best consequences of Covid, especially when you're dressed up in a pink onesie and a thick diaper.

"Wow, my heart is racing," the taller girl gushed as she set the food down on the kitchen counter. She hadn't expected it to be so… thrilling, but also terrifying, to be exposed to the public in a diaper. Granted "exposed" here meant "the front door was open" and "public" meant "nobody". While getting tanlines in diapers sounded easy, the actual practicality of it was pretty nerve-wracking!

We moved to the stools in the kitchen and laid out all the food like a spread. We were silent for a few minutes as we started to satisfy our hunger.

"These aren't so bad," I said, popping another fried pickle in my mouth. I had a napkin from the restaurant tucked into the collar of my onesie; I didn't want to get anything on it. Note to self: invest in bibs. Also maybe bottles or sippy cups or whatever.

"Lemme try one~"

Blossom - who was using chopsticks from the cutlery drawer to handle her greasy foods - reached over to the little waxed paper container to pluck out a deep fried pickle. She dipped it into the cup of ranch and plopped it into her mouth.

"Delivery really lowers the standards of quality I think," I said. "Like, we accept soggy fries and stuff. But it's just so convenient..." At least the cheesesteak was good. And the potatoes.

"I don't mind soggy fries, as long as they're well seasoned." If they weren't eating, Blossom might have even made a joke about liking soggy girls, too. "The chicken sammich is so good, though; the breading is to die for and I am shook, I did not expect that."

I got another cup of apple juice for my not-sippy cup. I filled it this time. The weird transitionary flow from Little to Not Little was disconcerting at first, but it was becoming normal. I was starting to understand it. The key to it was not caring so much. I didn't have to fear adulthood or cling to childishness. The moment mattered, not what came after.

As long as I allowed myself the complacency of Purgatory, I could visit both Heaven and Hell without fear.

When she was done eating, Blossom washed her hands in the kitchen sink. There was a certain calm normality to it; to the girl who was around six feet tall, standing in the kitchen, in a onesie and a diaper, washing her hands after eating. Maybe she ought to put her hair in pigtails. When she turned around and saw Amy dressed so similarly, she had to smile.

"Gosh you're so cute."

I rolled my eyes, a Grown Up Amanda move. How would Little Amanda have handled that? Sometimes I feared I was two people, but I found safety in the fact that I was likely many more.

After dinner, I sat with Blossom at the table and worked on our puzzle. I had another cup of juice and she was nursing a water bottle with a flip-up spout. Blossom put another piece in the right spot and I sulked a little.

"You're really good at this... it must be your engineering brain."

"It probably is. Maybe it's the whole apple-in-brain thing? I see everything like that; when I was learning to drive it was wild because my Dad couldn't believe that I could just parallel park on the first try. I visualize things pretty well, and I'm always doing it even when I don't think I am. So I pick up a puzzle piece and my brain starts extrapolating what's on it, and what's on other pieces, and I just kinda put it where I think it goes."

"I do that with stories," I shrugged. "Just not with puzzle pieces. Or... probably anything else, I guess." I really was a one-trick pony, huh? I put my chin down on the table and watched Blossom put another two pieces in the right spots.

"Well, you're a writer and I'm an engineer. So it sounds like we're pretty aligned to be in the right fields, right? I could never write like you do, and that's okay because I'm not a writer."

Another piece inserted with satisfaction.

It took another half-hour of Blossom performing exceptionally for the puzzle to be completed. I probably put ten pieces together in total, with the exception of the border. It wasn't exactly fun or Little-feeling, but it passed the time. Then we got Candyland out, which was much more exciting.

"Hm... this looks different to the one I played as a kid," I muttered, setting up the deck of cards and little plastic children. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but the board was definitely different.

"It's an old game," Blossom shrugged. "My dad probably played this one when he was younger."

"I swear there was a Black kid at the start..." But there were just two blonde white kids. I pulled out my phone to Google it.

"I honestly have no idea," Blossom confessed, sitting back on the sofa to wait for Amy to figure it all out. She could have helped to Google it, but she didn't want to be confronted by her socials if she got her phone.

"There are like twenty versions of this game," I said under my breath, clicking through them to try to find the one I used to play. "Yeah, see? A Black boy and an Asian girl. I'm not crazy."

"I didn't think you were," Blossom laughed. "Can we play now?"

"Oh, right... sorry." Blossom had finished getting everything set up, which wasn't very much at all. Candyland was a simple game of flipping a card and moving your piece.

"You go first," I told her.

Nodding her head, Blossom closed her eyes for good luck and drew her first card; a double purple! Not the best of the doubles, but it was a good start. She leaned over and moved her little figure accordingly.

I turned over a card. Green. And I already missed the Rainbow Trail.

"You know, when I was a kid, my mom played this with me. But every time, she would get up to go make popcorn. My mom loves popcorn. And I would shuffle the cards, but I'd make sure the first card was blue or yellow or purple. And the third card was orange. I knew I always got to go first, so this meant I always hit the Rainbow Trail."

"You could have used a double orange," Blossom said.

"Too suss," I laughed. "I was trying to be clever. My mom never said anything about it, but I think she always knew. And anyway, Candyland is so random, half the time I'd lose anyway. I'd get sent back to the Gingerbread Tree or something."

"That's how luck would have it; sometimes you start strong and get knocked back, sometimes you draw a single red and never recover and then suddenly you're at the end. It's like Mario Party, have you played that one? I don't know if it's popular, but my cousins had it and when we'd visit I'd always play it with them."

"I play with Lin sometimes." She was right - it felt like chance more than anything. I liked chance-based games because I could sometimes win them. I wasn't a great gamer.

"What the hell is this tree?" I asked. "Are those plums? Plums aren't a candy. It's supposed to be gingerbread! Those poor 80s kids..."

"Hey be nice to plums; they're cool. I used to climb trees when I was younger and collect whole baskets of them. And then my dad would make them into jam and that was so good on sandwiches."

"There are plum trees around here?" I'd never seen a plum tree in my entire life, but that didn't mean they didn't exist. I shrugged my shoulders and drew another card.

Blossom won Candyland twice. I didn't mind. I wasn't really a competitive person, and I knew my strengths and weaknesses. When it came to chance? That was not one of my strengths.

"I don't think I've seen this one," I said at the television. Bluey had been muted since we started playing Candyland, and it was so late that the doorwall through the curtains was pitch black.

"Want me to start it over?" Blossom asked.

"Yeah. I'm gonna get a refill." I grabbed my sippy cup and got to my feet.

"You know what this feels like?" Blossom had tucked her legs up underneath her crinkly diapered butt as she readjusted herself on the sofa and worked the remote. "It feels like a sleepover, or a slumber party; the kind with a bestie that you see on TV that I never got to have as a kid."

"Ah yes, the quintessential TV sleepover, where you and your friend put on adult diapers and snap-crotch onesies. I loved that episode of Stuck in the Middle."

I filled the sippy cup with apple juice and snapped the lid back on top. I came over to the couch and sat down in my usual spot on the chaise.

"Huh I don't think I saw that episode, must have been too busy being a grown-up at the time! But I do feel like it would have been an awesome DCOM, like a coming-of-age story but it's backwards. Would that make it a... going-of-age story?"

"If there's not a Disney Channel Original Movie about becoming a little kid again, I'll be very surprised."

And another cursory Google search.

"But is there one about an adorable writer girl and her hot cheerleader friend becoming little kids again? We gotta be specific here! DCOMs are like the binary notation of pi; anything is possible."

"The Poof Point," I read off my phone. "A 2001 movie about two parents who regress to being twenty-one again. Then fourteen. Then seven, and finally two. And their two kids have to take care of them or something. Not exactly what I was looking for, but I think it counts."

I closed my phone and took a sip of apple juice.

"I'm glad I'm so smitten with a girl who's actually a good writer because I gotta tell you? That sounds awful, cupcake. You should be a Disney Channel writer, because you'd put them all to shame."

"Rather, I could get paid for very little work." That was probably why people wrote for Disney Channel to begin with. A potential career path, perhaps? I'd look it up later.

"Play the episode," I said, and Blossom did.