N Scissorhands

"I think N may have done something he wasn't supposed to," Em says quietly from her computer, where she is checking to see if her social studies textbook is online yet.

"Why do you think so?" I'm wary; the two of them have been at each others' throat lately, and I can't necessarily trust every tattle that comes my way. Still, this doesn't sound triumphant or angry. It's just a statement of fact.

"Well, he just went walking past, covering his face with his hands."

We hear the door to his room slam. He never goes into his room on his own. We look at each other, and I sigh. I immediately wonder what he's done to himself, having recently spent almost all of Saturday morning scrubbing permanent magic marker off his arms, legs and face after he put "dec'rations" on himself. Apparently, now that he's five, he's making up for all that lost time when he was two and three and didn't do these sorts of things.

"Thanks for the warning," I tell her. "I'd better go see what he's done."

Knock. Knock.

"Who's there?"

"It's Mommy. Can I come in?"

"OK." His voice is muffled now. I walk in, and he has a pair of sweatpants over his head. I try not to let the laughter into my voice.

"Uh-oh," I say. "It looks like there's something you don't want me to see or know about. Did you do something you're not supposed to?"

"Yes," comes the voice from within the pants. "I cut my hair with the scissors from the kitchen."

Now here is where this whole pseudonymous thing, this whole thing about trying to be reasonable about how much of your child you expose to the ridicule of the entire web comes back to bite me in the butt. Because I'm DYING to put up the picture I just took of N at the kitchen table, doing his homework, after I did what I could (not much) to fix the 'cut' he'd given himself. ("My hairs were boddering me," he said by way of explanation when I asked him why he'd done it.) Instead, you'll just have to trust me: He looks simultaneously ridiculous and scrumptiously, vulnerably, edible.

And if you don't want to take my word for it, take Em's. "Oh my goodness!" she squealed when we emerged from the bathroom post-fix-up-cut. "N! You look so CUTE!"

"I told you Mommy," N said, looking up at me in smug satisfaction. "I told you everyone will still think I'm very cute."

The problem is? He's absolutely right.

What AM I going to do with this child? Aside from eat him up, that is.