Should I say that?

My answer is always yes, a thousand times yes.

J got sent home from school early today for being too hot.

I'm not kidding.

He's been under the weather for a few days but he isn't running a fever. He seems to just have a cold. He's been falling asleep pretty early the last few nights and getting a good fifteen hours of sleep. In the mornings he is superbly refreshed and ready for the day, but I guess by mid morning he looks sleepy again.

Today at school he asked to take his long sleeve shirt off and his teacher called T and had her pick him up, claiming he was roasting with fever. He was roasting alright, but not feverish. He simply needed to take his long sleeves off.

Whatever.

He came home in the middle of my overhaul of his and R's room. Good thing it wasn't the girl child coming home, she would have had a fit.

I was cleaning EVERYTHING in there and rearranging their wall hangings into eye-pleasing groupings so that I won't twitch anymore when I enter their room. She doesn't like change because she is a drama queen and a control freak and she did complain later on. But her protests were too late. I just have to get through a thing and then I can quell her temper. But if she were to walk in during a change like that...oh no...

This afternoon Monkey thought it would be funny to only sleep for an hour and then screech at everyone for the rest of the day, so while he did that the rest of us hung out at the craft table in the basement.

The following conversation ensued.

"Kimmy, I am going to make you a red mustache."

"No, J! You can't! Red mustaches aren't real!"

"Kimmy, are red mustaches real?"

"Yes, they are. Some people have black hair and some people have yellow hair and some people have red hair. Those are called gingers and they have ginger mustaches."

"Do you want a ginger mustache?"

"Oh, J, nobody wants a ginger mustache, but if you make it for me, I will love it."

A short time later I took a pile of craft trash over to the corner trash can and found a good four inch chunk of curly human hair on top of the garbage. I was confused. My hair had all been chopped off and not in the basement this time either. Who's...waaaait a minute!

"R, did you cut your hair?" I asked, noticing for the first time the huge, uneven gap on the left side of her face.

Mom E had the boys for an hour on Wednesday while I was away. She had blessed J with a pair of "kid scissors" for our craft table. The kids had been sternly warned against cutting anything besides paper. As far as T or myself knew, neither child had been alone with the scissors at any time.

And before you go defending kid scissors, saying they're not sharp enough to cut hair, let me tell you a little story about myself and the cheapest, crappiest pair of dull kid scissors ever created and the worst hair cut my little brother ever had.

Well, I guess that's the whole story...

Back to R.

She looked stunned and then thoughtful and then she said no. When she saw me about to say something else she said, "Oh, that was just some hair on the floor."

"Hair on the floor?!"

Either I hadn't vacuumed the basement in weeks or the child was lying. Or both.

"Go upstairs please, we need to talk."

For the next few hours I tried to figure out when she had done it and how I had missed it. I bathed that girl last night. I brushed her hair. Her mom brushed it this morning. How had no one noticed that gaping hole where curls had once been?

More importantly, when had she been in the basement alone without anyone knowing?!

We still don't know.

But T came home with news that she had received a phone call from R's teacher. Apparently our budding hair stylist also has a taste for human flesh. She licked a classmate today, and this is not the first time.

What?!

Because J got sent home from school and because he has two excitable grandmothers, Shabbat dinner was moved to our house on a moment's notice and T's mom showed up this afternoon with food. E's mom joined us later and they fussed over him all evening. Monkey started to crash about an hour before the adults would eat dinner so I decided to feed him in the quiet kitchen before he melted down completely and tried to kill one or all of us.

I was reciting Goodnight Moon for the zillionth time when R came into the room with a gift bag and yelled, "Happy Valentine's day!" With Mom E on her heels.

Another gift.

Mom E told me in Farsi that she loves me and that I am her love and she reworded it about six other ways, partially in English. She thanked me for being beautiful (you are all welcome) and then left me alone to finish feeding the punk who was yelling,
"Help! Grandma! Help!" as she exited.

I finished with him and turned him loose and then peeked into the Saks 5th Avenue bag to find a red windbreaker sweatsuit, circa 1984. And when I say red, I mean red red.

It's STILL the thought that counts, so I made sure to thank her later and tell her it was great. The wrinkled tags on it suggest that it has been lying around her home along with all the things she regifts to her grandchildren.

R received a coat earlier this winter that looked like James P. Sullivan of Monsters Inc. Exactly like him. We hope the Salvation Army can find a good use for it.

But yes, it's the thought that counts. So even when she took my face in her hands and told me she loved me I didn't slap her, which is usually my knee-jerk reaction to people touching my face.

I thanked her again and wished her a goodnight.

Later I tried on the pants, because let's face it, I'd wear them on laundry day, and thanked the Lord I'm not a ginger and can pull that color off.