The shrimp

We had quite a mystery to solve recently.

About three weeks or so before Christmas, K started talking about this shrimp. It was a mean shrimp that wore a red Santa hat, she said. Whenever she talked about this shrimp she would become quite upset. As most of this came up at the dinner table, I gave it little thought, thinking it might have been a book that was read at school, a new Christmas book about a Christmas shrimp.

As talk of this mysterious shrimp went on, more descriptive detail emerged...This shrimp wore green fur, too.

All I could think of was Pepe the King Prawn from the Muppets, wearing a Santa hat and a green fur boa.

In my mind, this image gave plenty of reason to K's discontent.

One magical morning the pieces of this puzzle magically fell into place. As we drove to school one day, we heard the song "You're a MEAN one, Mr. Grinch" while awaiting the notoriously long light at Nutley and 123. K became quite upset again, talking about this shrimp that was so scary. Still unable to put 2 and 2 together, perhaps due to the fact I had not yet had any caffeine, coupled with my concentration on traffic, I vowed to bring this issue up to her teacher that morning.

Once she and I figured out the "shrimp's" true identity was the Grinch, lights went on, angels from Heaven sounded and the great moment of realization was magical. Somebody had, a few weeks back, brought a toy Grinch for show-and-tell for Letter G week at preschool.

A----------ha.

Yesterday while awaiting the Chicken Little movie, we found a copy of The Grinch that Stole Christmas. I sat down and read it to K and she enjoyed it, but had lots of questions about why anyone would do such a thing, anyway.

I think that would be a good book to add to our yearly Christmas library.

And I thus resolve to listen better to my children. No, not just HEAR them...but LISTEN to what they have to tell me.