LITTLE RED HEADED MONSTERS

This is not Katya, but she is just as cute!

     

Hey, I forgot to tell you about the Little Red Headed Monster's and her family's visit yesterday! Sveta, her mom, called me a few times, but I couldn't meet with her. I was very embarrassed therefore, when she called me again right before something very important that I had to do. A sudden inspiration (or desperation!) struck and I told her to come an hour later.

     Sveta is a talented baker and a cook. I tried her borscht: like they say in Russia, "Pal'chiki oblizhesh!" Or, for those of you who do not have a privilege to speak that wonderful (and difficult as heck to learn) language: "You'll lick your little fingers!"

     She brought me a couple of pieces of cheesecake that she made. Yum-m-m!!!

     What's more, she brought me a couple of the cutest kids that I ever met (excluding my own, of course!). Katya (the Little Red Headed Monster) had a haircut, though, and all her wonderful curls are gone! Her mother said, Katya decided to shake her head while the mom was cutting. You know what? She is just as adorable! Yesterday she talked more free with me and even (we have to place this day in the annals of history) said "please" and "thank you"!

     Right from the doorstep, her brother, Hyosha, offered me a large envelope. He then changed his mind and began to try to get something out of it by himself. They were his school pictures! The absence of some teeth in his mouth only made him look more handsome and endearing! I and Roberta took the pictures and properly oohed and aahed over them. He looked at us happily, then I could see that he had a new idea: "I want to watch TV!" - he yelled.

     Katya was already feverishly trying to use every piece of technology that she could see. My laptop went flying to the floor, the house telephone receiver beeped because she didn't turn it off and my cell phone was now in her pudgy hand. I hurriedly removed it from her and, at the same time, found a children's program on TV, so Katya's outraged bellow finished in a docile: "A-A-a-a!" and died out, as her eyes glassed over and a little bottom plopped on a pillow in front of the tube.


     Sveta is two months away from giving birth to another baby. She looks ready to do so any minute now; in fact, a couple of times when she was just relaxing or something, I began to worry that that time has come!


     Because of Sveta's delicate condition, we sat with the kids, on comfortable couches in the living room. I made a mention of some soup and pasta, and the kids joyously caught on to that idea: "Pasta, pasta, we want pasta!"



     That was the end of Sveta's and my relaxation. Both of us proceeded to the kitchen and doled out pasta. I convinced Sveta to eat some chicken-mushroom broth with noodles. I was a bit self-conscious offering it to her, as she is a much better cook, but she looked happy enough after eating a big bowl of my soup.


     I asked Sveta, how Katya was doing at school. She recently started the kindergarten. Sveta rolled her eyes and said that:
1. Katya insists on causing mayhem in the cafeteria every day by whirling in the crowd of kids and knocking them with her cute pink backpack.
2. She doesn't like homework.
3. When she does homework, she avoids conformity and boredom by writing one letter very small, another, next to it - very big, while adding an interesting flourish to the third one.


     Pasta was just the beginning of the kids' fine dining experience. They shared a big bowl of pop-corn (the Red Headed Monster had to be forcibly separated from it because she didn't want to share with her brother). We still had a lot of the Halloween candy, and Katya and Hyosha sampled some of it with relish.
     

     As soon as she saw it, Katya popped a red-wrapped cough candy in her mouth, only to immediately take out the sticky thing and hand it to me. I didn't mind: the smaller a child is the more stickiness they produce. As Sveta began to try and cajole Hyosha out of my house (it was time for me to go pick up Sonny), Katya was strangely quiet. Usually, it's her who is in need of cajoling. I understood why she was so uncharacteristically agreeable when she took another one of those cough drops from her mouth and, again, bestowed it on me. The little imp's sly expression told me that she knew just how icky that candy in my palm was!