Emails from a 10-year-old

Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:03:20
Subject: Re: book
From: Madison Ross
To: Debra Ross

Dear Deb

I can't take time to come down but my book is coming along so great

-Madison

--------------------------------

Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:22:42
Subject: Re: book
From: Debra Ross
To: Madison Ross

Dear DEB?!!?!?!

Where's this coming from?


Love,

MOM

--------------------------------

Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:24:04
Subject: Re: book
From: Madison Ross
To: Debra Ross

um... is this not your name?

Happy Lightbulb Day

Our Lightbulb Day pinata hasn't been decorated yet, but at least this easiest-of-all-pinatas-to-make is ready to be covered with yellow crepe paper and stuffed with leftover Halloween candy. We're expecting friends at 6:30 for dinner and our annual celebration of reason, freedom, and productivity. I've got the games and stories and poems all planned, and technologically-appropriate gifts are wrapped and under the tree. It's going to be a good one.

Celebrate with us, at least in spirit!

How about some photos?

Chopped down a tree (notice no snow)...


Decorated it...


Sang at Barnes & Noble for Chorus concert...



And posed for me.

A bad milestone

I am feeling really bad about an incident last night. For the very first time, and, damn it, the only time, I called one of my children a bad name.

Last night, Madison snarled and snotted up at Ella, without provocation, and so very badly that before I could stop myself, I angrily called her a "little snot."

I don't do this. It's not just that I have a principle against calling people names; I don't do it.

And yet, there it is. Oy. I think what was going through my mind was something like, "Shock her. Make sure she understands and remembers that she can't talk this way."

I calmly apologized for it right away. But still.

My feeling bad about this doesn't make up for it. But I can't go overboard at making up for it, because then it will elevate the incident to an importance I hope it doesn't already have in her eyes.

But as soon as she gets home from this morning's science class, I'm going to apologize again. Casually. I do want to show that when we do something wrong to another person, we do our best to make sure that that person knows that we understand it and won't do it again. I want her not to think of her mother as a person who may call her a name. Ugh. Just typing that makes my insides twist.

Madison Ross ROCKS!

Now, of course all of YOU already knew that Madison Ross rocks. At least, you know that WE at least think that Madison Ross rocks.

And now a New York City literary agent thinks she does too. The agent had posted a challenge on her blog to see if any brave soul wanted to record "The Twelve Tips on Queries," to be sung to the "Twelve Days of Christmas." Madison DID! She recorded it, edited it, and sent it to Janet Reid.

Here is her note to Madison:

Dear Miss Ross,
You totally rock.

I'm sure I can scare up an author or two.

I'll be in touch.
Meanwhile, don't forget me when you want to get your writing career started.

We're about to blast off on this podcast series, folks! See you on the other side of the moon!

Update: If you check out the comments on Janet Reid's post, you'll see that one of them says: "She's home schooled? Why am I not surprised. It is comforting to know home schoolers will one day rule the world."

It IS friction, after all

Says David, of Madison, on a cold, snowy morning:

"You would almost think that the motion of her jaw would keep her warm."

It's good

Madison was beaming ecstatically after her first rehearsal tonight for Schoolhouse Rock. She has about four lines, and a solo in one of the songs.

I was impressed with the crew and the show in general. Very positive and nurturing, concerned with the quality of the show while mindful to keep it fun for the kids.

Sometimes, as a parent, you get a sense that an experience your child is having is particularly good for her, and you're happy with yourself for having figured out to put her right where she needs to be. This is one of those times.

Ella enjoyed her time with David, too. She'll have a lot of nice Daddy-and-Ella time for a while.

Last night was Ella's first Messiah

The Bach Children's Chorus was in the Rochester Chamber Orchestra's annual production of Handel's Messiah last night. It was Ella's first one. It would have been Madison's third one except she had a doozy of a stomach virus last year. It started at 7pm and got out at 9:30 (The Messiah is very long.) The kids were only in 4 numbers (I think) but they had to be on stage the whole time.

Two years ago, some of the BCC kids (NOT Madison) started playing finger games on stage while they weren't singing. It was visible from the audience. I was mortified, and I'm sure the offender's parents were even more mortified. And then this year, instead of an afternoon performance, it was a night performance. Ella has never made it through the Messiah before, and THIS time she was singing in it. So to try to ensure that the girls were okay and didn't totally wilt on stage, I fed them Coke and chocolate chip cookies before they went on. Whether it was psychological or the effect of the sugar and caffeine, they did fine.

It was a good thing I was sitting where I couldn't see their faces, though. (M was behind the adults and E was on the risers on stage right and when they were sitting and waiting, I couldn't see her face.) This is because I would have not been listening to the music; instead I would have been analyzing their faces to make sure that they were still in the land of the conscious. As it was, I was able to enjoy the music, and next year, if they're in it again, I think I'll just simply be able to relax.

Rochesterians ovate anything, but this performance did merit it this time. So I felt no ambivalence at all about standing up with the rest of the audience.

Only two more performances to go for the season: Ella has a dance recital on Friday evening and they both have one more BCC concert.

Now my main problem is that I have to figure out Christmas presents. Sigh.

It's official: I'm a theater mom

Schoolhouse Rock will now consume our lives for the next two months. The show is structured with a couple of leads--played by older teens--and then lots of opportunities for the rest of the cast to have lines and solos here and there. I think it will be a really good experience for Madison. Rehearsals Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. And one of her best friends is in it, too, so that makes it extra-nice and a good opportunity for carpooling.

I think that, ironically, a high proportion of Schoolhouse Rock performers are homeschoolers.

Get ready, folks, you know you remember this:

When Reginald was home with flu, uh-huh-huh,
The doctor knew just what to do-hoo.
He cured the infection
With one small injection
While Reginald uttered some interjections..

Hey! That smarts!
Ouch! That hurts!
Yow! That's not fair givin' a guy a shot down there!

Interjections (Hey!) show excitement (Yow!) or emotion (Ouch!).
They're generally set apart from a sentence by an exclamation point,
Or by a comma when the feeling's not as strong.

Here it is on YouTube. What's not to love?

Thinking seriously of temporarily changing our homeschool name to SCHOOLHOUSE ROSS. :-)

Auditions for "Schoolhouse Rock"

Madison is auditioning tonight for a theatrical production of Schoolhouse Rock, in which the actors are kids age 10-16. I don't know much about the script, but it features all of the great songs we remember and love. Her audition song is "I'm Just a Bill" (though she could have chosen "The Preamble" or "Interjections").

She's concerned because she has no natural dancing talent. (Not that I emphasize it to her, but she says it, and she's right. She is quite the thudder. Grace is not her strong suit.) But she's always been able to get by on brains when it comes to choreography; that is, she's a quick learner, she's good at remembering steps when they're taught to her. And in an audition, that serves her well.

Funny thing is, she's quite blasé about the whole audition, which makes me happy. She's not nervous. She really has perspective on the affair. I asked her about it this morning, why she is so cool about it. She answered that she knows she can sing, and do many things well, so even if she doesn't get in, she's okay with that. She's auditioned before for small things, so she knows what it's like. And, she's only going for the chorus, not for any of the main speaking parts. It's all probably fun, but not a big deal, she does a lot.

Perfect attitude, and she didn't even have to hear it from me! Hope she does well tonight, though. We'll know by Saturday.

Update: The Fates decided that since I thought I was so freakin' smart about my own kid, they'd send Madison into a panic attack about the audition not 10 minutes after I hit the "publish post" button.

She did it! NaNoWriMo!

Well, it's November 30. NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) ends in an hour and a half.

Me? I gave up after the first week. Too busy, although I got quite a bit written in that time.

But Madison...she had a goal of 7500 words. That's about 25 double-spaced pages, to you uninitiated.

She worked on it steadily. All herself. I hadn't read a word.

But then the Thanksgiving holiday got in the way. As of this morning, the LAST DAY, she had under 6000 words. And piano lesson, and bowling, and viola lesson, and karate.

My competitive and determined girl didn't like this one bit. I gave her the "day off" from regular school (aside from those outside lessons) and she wrote every spare minute. And then...

After karate, she still had a thousand or so words to go on The Storm Lords of Saturn.

I offered my services. My fingers, actually. Because one thing I can do is type awfully fast.

"But I don't want you to know the story," she protested.

"No worries. I won't listen. I can think about something else while you're dictating."

She was skeptical. How could I not listen, and listen, at the same time? It took her a while to get going, but then the words just started spinning out of her. I really wasn't listening, not critically, anyway. But at one point, I laughed, because she had dictated something funny and quite artful.

"You ARE listening to the story," she accused.

"Well, yes, because it just got so darned interesting," I said. She grinned happily, proudly. She didn't mind me listening anymore. She even started discussing the plot with me. We had a grand old time.

And just ten minutes ago, she finished the challenge. The novel itself isn't finished, not by a long shot. She wants to keep writing and writing. But she pasted in what she had into her NaNoWriMo account. 7511 words. Up came a big YOU WON page, with an inspiring message that she immediately printed out to keep forever.

And, she bestowed on me the ultimate compliment: a new nickname.

Mommy-Bot.

I'll keep that forever, too.

Sneak peek of new podcasts!

Today, Madison and Ella started their new podcast series, in which they interview children's authors, from the kid's perspective.

Was this their idea? Well, no, not exactly. Just before the Book Festival a few weeks ago, the girls had just "cut their first CD" for their singing duo group that they call "DS2," which also includes interviews with each other. I was talking about that with a few local kids' authors at the dinner following the Festival, and the idea to have them interview authors just sort of sprang to all of our minds at once. I went home and put the question to the girls, and they were very enthusiastic.

So their first author interview was today. It was with Charles Noland (whose real name is Dan Beerse), one of the guys who came up with the idea with me that night. We had to get used to calling him "Mr. Noland." Anyway, Dan was honored to be the first. He came over today and recorded the interview in Madison's office-slash-recording studio (a good microphone hooked up to her computer with WavePad recording. Dan was totally patient and supportive as we all got into a groove of asking questions; he was the perfect First Interviewee. The unedited version is about 20 minutes or so; I anticipate that Madison will put all of the audio chunks together and edit them down to about 10-15 minutes.

During the course of the interview, I remembered that one of Dan's books is called Saving Christmas. So I had Madison do a separate little interview with him at the end, just about that book -- because, 'tis the season, you know, and Dan wants to sell books. And I of course live (at least partly) to promote local children's authors.

This evening, Madison edited that segment down to 3 minutes, added a little intro about her podcast series, and saved it all as an MP3 file.

Here it is. Make sure your speakers are on!

I'll release it officially tomorrow in my e-newsletter.

If anyone has an idea of a good name for a KidsOutAndAbout.com podcast series that is of kids interviewing children's authors, please let me know. I hope to find a good name soon. (It needn't be confined to my kids doing the interviewing, by the way...if you have kids who want to record interviews with kids' authors, do so and send 'em my way!)

The Fates, and programming

The Health Gods were not listening very carefully when I told them to bless us with illness early LAST week if they were going to at all this holiday season.

Ella is sick. Sore throat, and a very croupy-sounding cough. But maybe it's not the flu. She had a miserably congested night last night, which was no picnic for me, either.

The rest of us are still feeling okay. Keeping fingers crossed that Ella's the only one. No bowling for the girls this afternoon (who wants to infect the rest of the bowling alley!) and Ella will stay home instead of go to karate this evening.

In brighter news, though, the girls have been going gangbusters using a free programming language developed at MIT, called Scratch. Madison used it all day yesterday, and today she showed Ella how to do it. Great for schoolwork! Logic! Math! reading! Thinking skills! School!

Remember, she's still so young

I sometimes have to remind myself that Ella is still a little kid, and not rush her into being bigger or more mature than she is.

She happened upon an old "Wee Sing" video, and this time paid attention to the fact that there are more that exist than the two that we have. So yesterday we found some at the library, just for her. Even though they're really for preschool-kindergarten and she is 8, she has been enjoying them. I guess if she were at school and talked about this, she might be ridiculed for liking "baby stuff." But I so want both the girls to be free to be *who they are*--and so this is a good experience for me. Just because Ella is singing in the Messiah in a few weeks, for example (the Bach Children's Chorus performs in this each year and they're on stage for 3-and-a-half hours), doesn't mean she doesn't still enjoy being a child. I need to remember to give them the options to enjoy exactly what they enjoy.

I think we'll go back and read some excellent picture books. The language in those is often much more sophisticated than in the chapter books she's reading now, anyway.

Leonids

It's 3:30 am. It would be great if the Leonid Meteor Shower would actually show up.

If it did, I'd wake up the kids.

Maybe it's the fact that my only good window faces east and northeast. But the internet won't give me any good info about where Leo is right now.

Recent busy-ness

I think I'm going to have to give up on the idea of 50,000 words for my novel this month. Besides, my novel won't end up being 50,000 words. But I'm woefully behind, at only about 7500 words, due partly to last week being devoted so heavily to the Rochester Children's Book Festival, and this week to catching up. I had a booth there to let folks know about KidsOutAndAbout.com. The booth is always 6 hours of nonstop helium balloon blowing-up-and-tying, but it's a great deal of fun. My kids get the biggest kick out of being The Kids Who Use The Helium Tank And Give Out Balloons (you can see the other kids envying them). And it's mostly a big annual ego trip for me because those parents who aren't busy signing up for the email list there are busy telling us how much they love the web site and getting the e-newsletter.

My goal is that within 2 years I'm going to be inside the main hall, behind a desk piled with my books, and hire someone else to be the face of KOA with my kids and get sore fingers blowing and tying balloons.

This is me and my colleague June (who is going to help me with the administrative work of expanding KOA) and Madison and Ella at the booth.

Click moment on fractions

Ella has been feeling quite fractious over her fractions, with little reason for it. She said she had the sense that she's going too slowly, but that's not actually true, she's progressing just fine.

But yesterday, she had a major CLICK moment where she understood, really understood, how fractions are related to division and multiplication. She got the "breaking it up into parts" idea, finally. I think she got that glimmer that "A Whole" is not one static thing, that the definition can switch depending on the thing you're investigating.

Take a pizza, that's easy, and divide it into 8 parts. Each piece is 1/8 of a whole. Ella has never had a problem with this.

But it wasn't until we *started* with the parts (in this case, a drawing of a bunch of fruits and vegetables...carrots, apples, and pears), made them into one big "group" in our minds, and then identified each type of thing as a fraction of the big group, that she really got it.

I LOVE that startled look on their faces when they finally say "Oh!" And then that gratified, proud, slow smile that follows the exclamation, as they *realize* they understand something that they didn't a moment before. I live for that. Nothing else like it in the world.

39 Clues, Part 6

The new 39 Clues book, Book 6, came out today.

It wasn't at the libraries yet. So I gave in to Madison's entreaties and bought it for her after I went out to vote. I mean, I can think of a lot more indulgent parental indulgences.

We arrived at Barnes & Noble at 5:40. The book was $11.36 with the B&N Member's discount. She finished the 206-pager at 7:45, including the interruption for dinner. She said it was among the better ones in the series. I was glad, because that's a pretty high price-per-reading-minute. Made me wish J.K. Rowling was coming out with another one; at least it would hold her for 12 hours or so.

NaMoWriMo Day 3 part 1

I am in the middle of Day 3.

I just did a little spreadsheet math to see the daily count of where I need to be, if I'm going to do this in 27 days. (30 minus our trip.)

And let's just pretend that I'm going to write on Thanksgiving and the few days that follow while los Cubanos are here for Thanksgiving, because I'm not sure how I'm going to succeed at this, anyway, without a little self-deception.

Day 1: 1852
Day 2: 3704
Day 3: 5556
Day 4: 7408
Day 5: 9260
Day 6: 11112
Day 7: 12964
Day 8: 14816
Day 9: 16668
Day 10: 18520
Day 11: 20372
Day 12: 22224
Day 13: 24076
Day 14: 25928
Day 15: 27780
Day 16: 29632
Day 17: 31484
Day 18: 33336
Day 19: 35188
Day 20: 37040
Day 21: 38892
Day 22: 40744
Day 23: 42596
Day 24: 44448
Day 25: 46300
Day 26: 48152
Day 27: 50004

I am in the middle of Day 3 and only at 3495 words. Yikeroo. How do people do this and have, you know, jobs?

If you answer, I won't be able to look you in the eye, my head will still be gazing down at this screen...

Update as of 8pm: 5581 words.

Wow, this program works.

National Novel Writing Month

November is National Novel Writing Month; there is actually an official organization called NaNoWriMo, which challenges writers to write a 50,000-word novel in the 30 days of November.

Madison is participating with me, although those in the Young Writers program get to choose their own word goal. Madison chose 7500, which works out to 250 words per day. We're taking time each day to sit together, just the two of us, and blam out the novels.

Madison is doing great. She's working on a book called The Storm Lords of Saturn (think I have a fantasy reader?). She's already at 350 words.

I'm doing a revenge novel, of sorts -- I had vowed, at the age of 9, "someday" to write a book with this title: My Father the Health Food Nut. Now, I'm not actually writing my story--my own experiences wouldn't make for a very satisfying plot. But that's okay, it's going to be profoundly satisfying to ME to have carried through on a 31-year-old mission, even if the book never sees actual ink. Here is my synopsis:

11-year-old Georgia, tired of her father's health food fads and obsessive control of her diet, starts her own "organic revolution," patterning it on the original War for Independence.

One's NaNoWriMo account keeps track of the number of words--you paste it in each night and it updates your count. I'm at 2827 and, boy, are Madison and I having fun. Which is, after all, the point.

I'm going to update my word count here each day; it'll help to keep me motivated. I'm going to lose 3 days in the middle of the month for a trip, so I'll have to work extra hard to get there.

It's been a while since I engaged on this level

To my surprise, I've found myself embroiled in a creationist-evolutionist argument on, of all things, a *birding* blog. Most of my life does not involve engaging people in these types of arguments; obviously, I have my own convictions, but I'm better at, and have more interest in, doing other work than in arguing philosophy. And others do this much better than I. But I just couldn't help it today. I encountered the "you who believe in science have just as much faith as those who believe in the God of Creation" argument and just couldn't resist.

This guy said:

Deb: evidence? objective reasoned evidence? Scientifically verifiable evidence? Evolution is Science!? It all comes down in the end to epistemology. It always does. How do we know what we know? What are our standards for evidence, and how do we assemble evidence into reasonable, working definitions of truth?

I would argue that there are some scientists, even evolutionary scientists, and an great abundance of “scientifically minded modern people” who believe in evolution on exactly the same grounds. They have no direct experience of evolution in action. They have not done a single experiment to verify the truth of the theory, nor do they know anyone who has...

I couldn't help it; I couldn't just let this one go. I had already written my 1250 words for my novel (I'm doing National Novel Writing Month...50,000 words in the 30 days of November) and it's not like the laundry wasn't waiting. But...

Of course, Stephen, you’re right, it all comes down to epistemology.

How DO we know what we know? (Remember, knowledge–THINKING something is true–is different from what people call FAITH. I don’t know what the epistemological mechanism of “faith” is, or how it is distinguished from “make believe,” but it certainly isn’t KNOWLEDGE. If it were, then you and others would simply call it “knowledge,” not faith.)

I will answer the question you are actually asking, then, here. Leaving aside questions of faith, how do we know what we know?

The answer is that the only way that human beings can know anything is by the evidence of our senses. Our senses give us the primary data that our minds test and organize. Everything we know all ultimately comes back to sense data, and to our cognitive processing–the noticing of similarities and differences to create abstract concepts–of that sense data. Is something true? We check the evidence of our senses, and we check to verify that others are having the same experience.

When I say to someone that a certain thing is TRUE, I can only pound my fist and declare that to be the case if I have the objective evidence to which I can refer the person…evidence to which they have access through their senses, and reasoning based on the evidence of their senses.

No reputable scientist says the following: “Well, I BELIEVE this is true, but I can’t demonstrate conclusive evidence that would satisfy YOU, Deb. You can’t replicate my experience. But believe it’s true anyway, Deb. And respect me for it.” No, to the contrary: Scientists who have become established as knowing what they’re talking about have generally gotten that reputation BECAUSE they welcome honest inquiry into the topic, and because they hold out their claims as independently verifiable. They welcome validation from others willing to test the conclusion, and they welcome information from others trying but failing to replicate their conclusions. And, if they are honest, they welcome evidence refuting their conclusions.

That is, the way to learn things that are true about the world is through honest investigation of the natural world: I employ my mind to process the evidence of my senses. I trust scientists who employ the proper scientific method for the same reason, because they are engaged in an objectively verifiable quest for the truth. I do not trust the claims of people who do not welcome independent investigation, who do not hold their claims up to scrutiny.

This is why it is different to have provisional trust for a scientist’s claim than to trust religionists. The scientist always seeks to refine his understanding of the natural world *by examining the facts*, and testing, testing, testing. Religionists may be questioning, but faith (which seems to be commonly defined as “holding something to be true in the absence of verifiable fact”) precludes testing, indeed, precludes the very idea of proof.

If I encounter contrary evidence to something I think is true, then, I investigate further. And what do I investigate? The facts. How do I encounter facts? By seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, or tasting them. What else are facts? Abstractions that are generated as a result of cognitive processing of things that are experienced with the senses.

Emotions are facts, too, in the sense that it is a fact that unthinking people irritate me. But facts do NOT come into being by humans imagining them, or wishing for them, or feeling them. My irritation at someone is not *evidence* that they’re wrong. (If someone said to me: “How do you know we’re not all molecules in the spit of a giant dragon, Deb?” I can’t say to them: “Because the idea irritates me.”) Similarly, Stephen’s deep desire for there to be a Spirit in the Sky with a Plan is not evidence that one exists. Nor does the conviction of millions of people that something is true constitute evidence. Ask Gallileo.

I'm pretty sure he won't say, "Oh, wow, Deb, I get it now, thanks so much, thank heavens you've set me straight." But I still had to do it.

Madison won a little poetry contest

Rochester-area poet Joe Sottile has a monthly poetry contest for kids.
Madison won October's contest with a poem about Halloween.

Joe just posted it on his web site.

Madison is happy.

Joe doesn't get a lot of submissions. He'd love more.

A have a violist

Madison started taking viola lessons a few weeks ago.

It might be startling how quickly she's picked this up if it weren't for the fact that she already plays piano and some flute.

She loves it.

Bonne idée

C'est vrai, une bonne idée.

Thanks to Sue for the costume.

Donating their brains to science

Ella and Madison are really excited because next week, they're going to be subjects in a brain scan test at the University of Rochester's neurodevelopmental lab.

They get to play a computer game while they're getting an MRI of their brain. Isn't that COOL?

What's more, the study then loads them up with gifts after: Each girl will also get a small toy/puzzle from the treasure chest, a larger toy/book/game from the prize shelf, a lab t-shirt, and a picture of her own personal brain.

And a lot of information about what the researchers are doing, and how the brain works.

And... $50. Each.

They were excited even before they found out about the $50. Now, they really can't wait until next Thursday. I don't think they've ever had that much money at one time, before. We just watched the movie that the lab made to show them how the whole MRI thing works.

This should be so interesting.

More poetry

Ella wrote this poem yesterday:

I Am a Snuggly Heater

I am something I like to call a Snuggly Heater.
And the reason I think I am one
Is because sometimes at night I snuggle with my mom
And when we wake up in the morning
She says that I heated her up all night.
And that's why I say
I am a Snuggly Heater.

This week's poem memorization

We decided it was time, for the sake of cultural literacy, to have the girls memorize something from the Bible. The 23rd Psalm was a natural choice.

Just now, to see how well Ella knows the poem, David prompted:

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want..."

Ella didn't miss a beat, and continued: "...to say this poem any more."

The "Getting Embarrassed" phase

Ella has leaped full-force into a phase where she gets embarrassed.

Fortunately, she's not yet at the stage at which *I* embarrass her. (Frankly, I think that one is quite a distance in the future.) No, this stage is characterized by her embarrassment at just about everything that has to do with herself.

Examples: She's embarrassed about the sound of her own voice on tape. She's embarrassed to stumble over a word when she's reading. She's embarrassed on behalf of the villain, sometimes, when Columbo is homing in on the truth. She's embarrassed for me to see her when she's singing in a small group at chorus rehearsal. She's embarrassed at praise. She's embarrassed at love scenes in a movie. She's embarrassed at going first for something in a group.

I think this is a real sign of maturity, a new awareness of herself as someone who simultaneously acts in the world AND doesn't really know what she's doing yet. The second half of that sentence is the new bit. It's the emergence of the "is this the right thing in this situation? Damn, I don't have enough experience to know" filter. I remember the embarrassment that goes with this emerging sense, and the trapped feeling of additional embarrassment about not being able to handle the embarrassment smoothly.

As Ella has gotten older, I watch her starting to project ahead farther into the future. She is starting to realize how far she has to go, I think, before she can be confident in what she's doing, and I think this is part of what is making her skittish and embarrassed. She used to be supremely confident about just about everything, and that's no longer the case. I suspect she implicitly realizes that the standards of behavior won't always be simply externally set by parents; increasingly, she is going to have to start identifying those standards herself. She's not sure how to do this. It really is a very new filter...how to make sure you do the important things right, and how to shake off mistakes quickly for the things you do wrong, at the same time as learning from them.

Although this is difficult for a mother, I actually have decided that I don't want to rob Ella too quickly of the embarrassment, for a couple of reasons. First, because it is *hers*. It's her genuine emotion. I want her to feel what she feels for her own reasons, not because I tell her. If she decides to change her reaction, I want her to do so because she sees that it's reasonable to do so, not simply under pressure from me to slam it back.

Also, it's very useful as a kid to have the regular experience of doing the right thing *in spite of* one's emotions about it. For example, Ella should talk to me about certain things even if it makes her embarrassed to do so, *because* she shouldn't have to deal with things alone at her age (and because she should get in good practice for this when she's an adolescent). It's okay to be embarrassed about whatever it is, I tell her, but you can't let that get in your way of getting it done, you can't let it wilt you. So these small embarrassments can be very useful that way. This way, she both gets validated for the embarrassment ("I remember how hard that was for me, too...") but encouraged to push through it.

Another reason not to slam back the embarrassment is because it can be an extremely useful barometer for helping one do the right thing. Suppressing the emotion of embarrassment at minor infractions could lead to evasion as a mental habit, or unconcern with ethics entirely. I don't think there is much danger of this with Ella, but people *should* be embarrassed about embarrassing things; that's entirely rational. Not pleasant, but rational. Life is not always a bowl of cherries, and age 8 is the perfect time to start dealing with that, in minor and unimportant ways.

So as I've been talking with Ella about these things, my main strategy hasn't been to wipe away her embarrassment. Sometimes she won't tell me for a little while...she needs me to "make" her tell what's on her mind. That's fine, I do that, just patiently smiling and warm, telling her that it will feel a lot better after she has talked with me about it. (It does, too...that's true.)

Second, because I really do vividly remember exactly what this experience was like, I tell her that. Just hearing about how I understand really helps her. Hearing about how everyone else feels this way, too, especially the good people, helps her too. And hearing about how it will eventually just go away and she won't have this experience also helps.

Always, I assure Ella that no matter what, if things ever get hard, she always has us. It doesn't matter if she's 8 or 14 or 40, we can help her get through whatever has to be faced. Sometimes she literally crawls into my arms at that point and buries her beautiful little face in my shoulder. If she hasn't already told me what's worrying her, that usually works.

To be honest, there have been a couple of times that Ella was embarrassed so needlessly that I was able to tell her easily that this can be shaken off very fast. "Oh, you're embarrassed about that there was a grass stain on your coat? Really, Ella, you needn't be...no one gave it another thought, seriously, don't let it get in your way." And then I focus her attention elsewhere.

Unintentional consequences of my school stories

I am not sure what to make of my sensitive little girl Ella.

I showed the girls today some current stories that show the stupidity of "zero tolerance" policies at schools: of the Eagle Scout in upstate NY who was suspended for having a knife locked in the boy scout kit in his car, parked on school grounds, and also the story of the 6-year-old who excitedly brought his new Boy Scout utensil kit so he could eat lunch with it, and was consequently suspended.

I heard a whimper and glanced over at Ella. I was shocked to see the lower lip quivering and the eyes filling with tears at the idea of these injustices happening at school. I hastened to add that the parents of these two boys did what any sensible parent living in a free society would do: alert the media and let the truth of the story shine the light on these idiots. She felt a little better, but still not good. She asked me not to tell her any more.

It's a good thing I didn't tell her about the junior high school girl being strip-searched on suspicion of bringing Advil to school. (That one still really, really rankles me, partly because I can imagine myself being paralyzed if it had happened to me at the age of 13. I WAS one of those evildoers who brought ibuprofen to school, so it could have been me in that position.)

It is fortunate that Ella will not ever have to go to school, because I think I've--totally unintentionally--made her regard the idea with absolute fear and loathing. I guess she's a little young for these ideas. I don't mind her loathing arbitrary rules, but she doesn't need to loathe the idea of school, per se.

Thank goodness my children will never, NEVER have to put up with the crap those other kids must. (And if someone ever tried to hand it to them, boy would such people have some trouble on their hands. They'd have to deal with both me AND David.)

I just asked Madison why she thought Ella got so upset, and Madison told me that Ella was afraid something like that would happen to her at some point. "Doesn't she know that it never will?" I asked. "Daddy and I would never let that happen. And if it did, they'd regret it really quick."

"I don't think *I'll* ever be able to stand up to anyone," she said kind of mournfully.

"Are you kidding me?" I was surprised. "Madison, you're only ten. Trust me, you're being raised by David Ross. You have a tongue like a whip. When you're an adult, there will be none better."

She looked doubtful.

"Seriously," I continued. "But then again, you don't have to worry about standing up for yourself necessarily. We've got your back."

"As long as I want?"

"As long as you want."

Unfortunate homeschoolng math moment

I was working on math with Ella this morning, somewhat late because one of David's students had visited for a few hours at breakfast.

Ella knew this was going to be a shortened schoolwork day because of our visitor and because bowling is early this afternoon.

Nevertheless, there she was, whining at me shortly before lunch. "I wish I only had to do ONE page instead of TWO pages."

I looked at her, annoyed, and said, "You know, someday just for kicks I think I'll give you a taste of a REAL school day. We'll start at 8am, we'll end at 3, I'll give various lectures and you can sit still and listen, you'll do your work, and then afterward you can do your homework. How's that sound?"

She burst into tears.

Really not my proudest moment.

Ultimately, she will not be a mumbler, damn it!

Madison seems to have adopted a habit recently of looking at the ground and mumbling when she's talking with someone she's just met. She's not bad at the initial handshaking, but then she lapses. I know it's because she feels awkward and wants to say the right thing...or, more important, she doesn't want to say the wrong thing. But it has been driving me a little nuts, lately. I really am vehement that the kids will not grow up to be mumblers. I actually had to remind her today to look at who she was speaking it.

Ella doesn't do this, despite being shyer than Madison.

I think I'm just going to have to be better in the few minutes before they meet someone new, at reminding them how to do it.

A taste of the office

I do love this work-home life I've carved out for myself. I really do. I haven't worked at an office in 14 years. And I'm happy that I don't. I never want to again.

But...

It so happened that I stayed extra-long at the radio station today after I was on the air, because I got into a chat with one of the DJs and the program director. We talked about some ideas for upcoming mutual promotions. It was just like the kind of feedback and professional visibility that I used to get around the water cooler back at the publishing company I used to work at in the early 1990s. I almost didn't want to leave.

They invited me out to lunch in 10 days or so, just for fun. And you know, I'm really looking forward to it. It's not just networking, although it kind of is networking. It touched the businessperson in me in a way that hasn't happened in a very long time, even though I've had lots of lunches with clients. We scheduled it for a day that the girls are at an all-day homeschooling camp.

Don't worry, I'm not going to send the girls to school. But it did drive home to me how very much more I could accomplish during the workday if my business colleagues weren't 8 and 10 years old. And, that if I incorporate a little more of this into the work-life balance, that would be a good thing.

Overextended

The name of the game in the Ross house is: Overextended 2009!

Both David and I are playing that game this fall, and it's no picnic. I know I'm writing a lot less than I used to; blogging is one of the things I finding it difficult to justify, even though I have all these analyses going on in my head all the time, things I'd like to record about the girls' development and experiences. One thing that ISN'T falling by the wayside, though, is the girls' education, thanks in part to some of their new classes. Ella in particular is at a new stage.

Ella's music education (and, consequently, conceptual learning) has been thrust ahead by her acceptance into the Bach Children's Chorus, and the discipline and practice required to be proficient. This is Madison's third year in the BCC. When Ella suddenly decided to audition at the end of the summer, David and I nearly gave her a lecture about how she really would have to be serious about this, how this is a commitment to real work. But we decided to hold off on talking with her about this until we saw how she took it. Thankfully (and somewhat surprisingly, since Ella doesn't typically launch energetically into new experiences, especially if they involve work), the lecture wasn't at all necessary. She's working hard at chorus; she's very disciplined, enjoys it a lot, never whines about having to practice, and is leaping ahead in the same way that Madison did two years ago.

Thanks to the fact that she can now read, Ella is finding new experiences open to her in ways that they weren't last year. She'd never be able to do chorus if she were still at last year's reading level. But also, she's having no trouble in drama class, which she would have had she taken it first semester last year; no one even has to make reading allowances for her as they did second semester last year. Today, she participated in this great art-history-literature-research class that the Fabulous Adrienne the Librarian at Webster Library has designed; Ella talked enthusiastically about how she was able to research more information about Paul Revere's Ride with a little guidance from the librarians. (Last year, she would have been in over her head at that part.)

And this year, I decided to make Ella WORK in math in a way that simultaneously cuts back on the amount of preparation I have to do. So we've started using a fifth-grade textbook that is only so-so, but fine for our purposes. Ella is pretty proud about doing fifth-grade math in the third grade, and that alone drives her along even when she's not necessarily feeling like working. That, and we go through the information together. I will admit to some guilt feelings about not designing the curriculum specifically to her needs, to taking the easy way out here. But she's learning plenty, and I get to see where her gaps are, which I might not have thought of had I not been using a guide.

Ella is still apt to get overwhelmed too easily, and take the easy-whiny way out ("I can't do this") whereas if she were in school, she'd buck up and push through it. That -- the crying -- is one of the down sides of home schooling. But for all of her whining and moaning about how she can't do something (I can't decide if it's a lot or a little, sometimes it seems like a lot, even though overall she is not a whiny child, she's cheerful almost to a fault), I know she's a lot more confident than she'd be if she were in school and were constantly being compared with the rest of the class. Whereas Madison's competitive drive to be the best would work to her advantage, I think Ella (who doesn't have the same drive) might tend to sink into mediocrity. This way, Ella gets to be Ella, happy to learn even if she's not pursuing knowledge relentlessly. Of course, I'll make darned sure she knows what she needs to know before launching in life.

And now, back to work. Or maybe to sleep.

Tag's grammar

Madison has a new stuffed dog named Tag. Tag is a big, very cuddly, Bernese Mountain Dog.

Madison: "Tag convinced Ella to read him a book out loud."

David: "Madison, we never convince someone TO do something, we convince someone OF something or convince someone THAT they should do something."

Madison: "Well, tell that to Tag."

New strategy for fiction writing

I've been in a slump, recently, about getting the Frontier Team published. The Summer of Rejection really took it out of me. And I have some revisions that I'd like to make to Book 1, specifically to make the main character more vivid and recede the other characters a bit. So it seemed that I should hold off on trying to get it published until I made the revisions, and then I got paralyzed about making the revisions...and more rejections came in... you can imagine.

So, at least partly in response to the "too wholesome" criticisms I seemed to be receiving from the hip agents who were rejecting me, I started my own personal rebellion against wholesomeness: I started writing another book, a book that I had vowed to write when I was nine years old, in response to what I perceived to be (and what in many ways was) parental tyranny: My Father the Health-Food Nut. I've been thinking about rebellion for many years, and trying to make distinctions between the right kind of rebellion (acting on principle to create a condition proper to humankind even if social forces are against you) and the wrong kind of rebellion (stamping your foot and wailing because you don't like something). The kids in this book use the American Revolution as a guide in their quest for independence and self-determination.

So, thanks to encouragement from my writing buddy Adrienne, I decided to hold off on completing Frontier Team Book 2 until my Book 1 revisions were done, but I'm also writing this other book because it's a heck of a lot more fun than revisions.

Getting the oomph to make the Book 1 revisions was getting me down, though...couldn't seem to find it. But Ella, blessed Ella, might have saved me. She finally, finally, is interested in The Frontier Team. So we started reading it together today.

We finished Chapter 1. "More, more!" she cried excitedly.

We read Chapter 2. "Keep going, don't stop" Ella said again. We had to set it aside then, though; I thought I'd end it on a cliffhanger to keep her interested. It seems to be working.

And, reading it aloud is helping me see good stuff to cut.

As a matter of principle, the kids are not means to my ends, of course. But they do come in awfully handy sometimes.

Talking Hands and the Answer Swan

Ella has recently been doing what started as an impromptu shadow skit the other week, but which has become a regular feature of our bedtime routine: Talking Hands.

We do it in my bedroom: She turns off all of the lights and then turns on just the tiny reading lamp that David uses when I'm asleep. She projects that onto the wall and then uses her hands as shadow puppets: the Talking Hand family! The mom, the big brother, the little sister, and two dogs, Pinky and Ringo. You'd think that her skits would be like other kids of skits that kids make up: You know, the kind for which you paste on a smile while you're wincing inside. But actually, Ella is hysterical! I think she takes a page from Jim Henson in her characterizations. The brother is sneaky and always getting into trouble by locking his sister in the closet and lying to his mother about it, the little sister is by no means beleaguered; she takes the locking up with good humor and a healthy dose of revenge, and she loves to train the dogs. What's funniest is when Mom Hand finds out about the brother's nightly perfidy: Ella brings the mom hand closer to the light source so she is huge, and looms over the brother in size as the brother glumly accepts his fate.

I think this might have gotten started because of the Birthday of the Day, oddly enough. We review the Birthday of the Day in the morning at the breakfast table, and at dinner we see how much they remember (for every correct answer, they get a nickel). Well, when we ask a question at dinner (Question: What did Hank Williams die of? Answer: Drugs and alcohol), in the past the kids have almost fallen over themselves waving their hands wildly in the "pick me, pick me" manner of schoolkids. So we started trying to get them to be a little more graceful with the admonition to "Raise your hand like a swan."

Ella started doing complying, but with a twist: When she knows the answer, she makes a "swan" shape with her hand and forearm and starts gliding it around, opening and closing the beak. We've taking to calling her "Answer Swan" at these moments. (Madison mostly still forgets to be calm...we've taken to calling her "Answer Rocket" as her hand shoots up into the air.) Anyway, the Answer Swan looks a lot like the Talking Hand family that has now become a new tradition in our house during Comedy Hour...um...I mean bedtime.

Children of the electronic age

Madison had been wanting to call her friend Max all morning.

She did so a few minutes ago. It was a very short call.

From what David and I can piece together, apparently they decided that what they needed to communicate could be better done by email. Madison put the phone down and raced up to her computer.

Simply happy

The girls and I were talking about this past summer, and we all agreed it was the best summer ever. Not just because of the trip to Yellowstone, although that was cool beyond words. And not just because we did tons of other interesting stuff. And not because I got a lot of work done, progress made on lots of projects (though not fiction writing, so much). We had relaxed down time, too. We played tetherball. The kids didn't go to camp. Madison started flute lessons and joined the tournament team at karate. The weather was great, no heat waves at all...I think it got about 90 only once or twice the whole summer. Madison even wrote a poem about "my summer vacation" our first day back to official school, which was Wednesday.

I think it was the best summer ever because we have slid into a groove. A nice groove. No more moving (not for the next 10 years, I hope!), no more settling in, no more figuring out of career paths, Ella can read, and Madison has thoroughly gotten over the jittery period of age 5-7-or-8 where you never knew whether she was going to try to read too much into something and it would send her over the edge. There was less developing and more enjoying. We didn't do school, but of course we did the Birthday of the Day and everyone read every day and the girls wrote in their summer journals and we did the brainy talk that we always do that is full of our lives anyway. I can't think of any way that the summer could have been improved, aside from, you know, the political situation in the world beyond our four walls, which doesn't touch the girls' lives anyway.

Of course, ex-Catholic that I am, I have a tendency to project ahead into the future, which slightly mars the warm glow of this summer with the fact that it is ending. Maybe...probably... I will someday look at the misery around me and long desperately for sometime BEFORE... I'll long for the Summer of 2009, when the girls were young and I was still actively their mother and they were happy, happy, happy... before hormones kicked in and then they went to college, off to their own lives, and before I lost my purpose AIIIEEEEE. Let's not do that.

I mostly succeed at banishing these thoughts and living in the moment, especially when the moment has them snuggled up in my bed with me watching an old episode of Columbo on the laptop. Or when we're on the couch and they're listening raptly to me reading the Penderwicks. Or when we're playing 2-against-1 at tetherball.

Someday they will be big enough to beat me at tetherball. But not yet.

Madison is 10.

In this morning's weekly e-newsletter to my KOA list, I took a rare moment to indulge myself in public thoughts about Madison's birthday:

Ten years ago today, in the wee hours of the morning, something magical happened. After 21 hours of labor, during most of which I was elated that the baby would be born on 9-9-99, Madison May Ross made her long longed-for entrance into the world the morning of September 10, and my life was forever changed. I had had all kinds of romantic visions of what childbirth would be like, how spiritually uplifting it would be, how I would always tell the baby that her birth day was the most wonderful day of my life. Well, of course, that was one of those bubbles that burst with the living of it--all of us parents have them, many times over, I've since learned. That's okay, though. The actual living of her life is much more important than the details of her birth.

These milestone ages--double digits!--provide a handy reason to pause and take stock, don't they? I've been doing that this week. One of the secrets of parenthood that I've learned in the living of it these past 10 years, but which people in the media rarely say because it sounds so boring and practical, is that the parenting issues I prepare for in advance are the things that tend to work out best. If I think about what's coming up in the girls' lives, gather information about it, read about it, talk about it with others I trust, and ponder its implications deeply, I am able to align what I do with reality, with my child's unique nature, with my principles firmly in mind. The things that blindside me don't work out so well. So, like many parents, I try to think hard about and plan for the things that are mostly under a parent's control. I think minimally about the potential disasters that wake us mothers in 2am cold sweats, and use those times to remind myself of how fortunate I am to have these precious people in my life. And, of course, I try every day to enjoy what there is to be enjoyed--that's partly what KidsOutAndAbout.com is about, isn't it?--to show my kids that our goal is to make life as happy, healthy, and productive as possible. So, happy 10th birthday, Madison, my love, my life.

I try not to get too preachy in my newsletter. Yes, I feel that I have a lot of answers to questions that most parents aren't even asking, but hitting people over the head with brainy or strongly-worded opinions will only alienate them. Instead, I want people just to feel that my ideas ARE their ideas...I don't want them to think that *I'm* smart, I want *them* to feel smart when they read what I have to say. But of course what I'm saying, when you distill it to its essence, is rather extreme. THINK, people. PLAN. Align your goals with REALITY. Don't fly along by the seat of your pants just hoping everything works out okay. THINK LIKE HELL. Children are not simply means to your ends. It's your responsibility to see that they grow up happy and healthy and productive. Have principles, and stick to them.

Anyway, on the 10th anniversary of Madison's birth, I took the opportunity to indulge myself a little. And I got a couple of nice notes in response.

At the end, I also added a few comments about 9/11. Last year I forgot to do so, and a reader wrote in wishing I had recognized it. So today I wrote:

As everyone knows, tomorrow is September 11, the eighth anniversary of the tragedies in New York, D.C., and Pennsylvania. May I take a moment to thank, publicly, all of the people whose work keeps us safe? Police, firefighters, EMTs, and those in the military -- and, also, their families, who every day recognize the risks that their courageous loved ones are facing. The significance of the events of September 11 was driven home to me much more profoundly because I had children. So when I look at my girls and take solace in their safety, I remember the people much braver than I who are willing to put their lives on the line to keep our country safe and free. They deserve my gratitude. They have it.

Harry Potter Party

The big Harry Potter party was a success! I think everyone had a good time, no problems with the kids, no one felt left out or anything, I think.

Here was the itinerary, heavily influenced by the Great Lynne, who sent me a bunch of ideas from *her* HP party for her own daughter:

Sorting hat: Hand out cards saying which house you were in. This was important for the Quidditch game later.

Diagon Alley, Olivander's.: Wand decorating; Decorate a little pot for Herbology later

The Care of Magical Creatures: Hagrid's baby dragon egg hunt in the back yard

The Magic Guy (a smart-ass magician who's quite popular around here)

Potions: Make yourself a drink by mixing a potion from seven different ingredients: Orange soda, root beer, ginger ale, 7-up, grape juice, apple juice, V8 Splash

Time Turner: Personalize magic calendar (cute thing I got at Oriental Trading Company...a little calendar that had that black coating you can scratch off, revealing the rainbow colors underneath

Herbology: Plant some herbs in your new pot (thanks to my friends Will and Sue who took charge of this event!)

Professor Trelawny: Fortune Telling with the Magic 8 Ball (We didn't get to this! And I even got a Magic 8 Ball, too! But we love the Magic 8 Ball!)

Quidditch, Madison style (essentially Capture the Flag with two golden snitches I made from tennis balls sprayed gold)

Charms: “Habeas felicitatem in die natale sua." ("May you have happiness on your birthday." Got my friend who is a Latin scholar to give it to me precisely, and spelled out phonetically, too.)

Cake

A few photos:

Everyday activism moment

I had a really proud Everyday Activism moment today:

This morning, I drew the names of the winners of the vacation getaway packages I got venues to donate to KidsOutAndAbout.com for my big newsletter membership drive. It resulted, in the month of August, in about 500 new readers, which I think is pretty good!

And this morning I got to spread joy by calling up the various winners and telling them what they won (overnights in various fun locations driveable from Rochester). How excited and happy people were! But with one caller, the joy was mine, too. She told me that she'd been thinking of writing ME an email, because thanks in large part to the inspiration my newsletter has been providing her for years in small ways, she decided this summer to pull their kids out of school and homeschool instead. "You showed me that it can be done," she said. "I'm really looking forward to it."

Wow.

It's not that I actually advocate for homeschooling in the newsletter; I don't hit people over the head with it at all, I never make snide remarks about public schooling or anything. I don't even say explicitly how much I love it. I just highlight some of the great homeschooling resources in our community, and make no secret about the fact that we do it.

It works, fellow homeschoolers. Just be your happy, confident, normal selves, obvious contributors to the community. People will want to be you. And their kids will benefit.

And so homeschooling moves away from the fringe and more into the mainstream.

P.S. I just got a lovely compliment from the marketing director of one of the organizations I've been working with to bring SteveSongs here to Rochester later this month. She wrote: "You are the best "ball of fire" for this community! Don't ever move away!" I just thought I'd share. Everyday activism, even on this tiny scale, helps to keep my spirits up when sometimes it seems like the wider society is going to hell.

Animals two ways

This afternoon, Madison heard me reading to David a passage from Temple Grandin's book Animals in Translation, which I've been finding quite fascinating in places.

Madison was very interested, and asked if she could read the book. I said sure, and handed it over. She spent a while with it, and has decided to go back and read it from the beginning.

Yeah. She'll be 10 in 2 weeks.

This same girl is also perfectly delighted to initiate a family snuggle on the bed and play "Mommy and Daddy Saint Bernard and Two Puppies" before we all settle in for the night.

I revel in my good fortune. Truly, the best of both worlds: a growing up girl who still loves a good snuggle and being nosed by the Mommy Dog.

Present perfect

For some reason, we got into a discussion at the dinner table about the verb "to eat" and its various permutations.

"I eat," I dictated. "I am eating. I ate. I have eaten. I had eaten."

I was finished (having, I now realize, forgotten the future tenses). But there was one more. Suddenly, from Ella:

"I am being eaten."

Milestones

I was saying on my Facebook status this morning that it somehow seems to me that the five milestones of child development are:

1) Is potty-trained.
2) Hops in the car with no extra gear re...quired, fastens own seat belt.
3) Can be sent to play "outside somewhere."
4) Enjoys two hours of violin and piano music without fidgeting.
5) Gets job and supports self.


Obviously, I was kind of kidding about #5, but #4 is a real milestone that I don't think everyone can achieve. Given that I love concerts, I'm fortunate to have had kids with the constitutions to be able to achieve it, and pretty early to boot. I know there are stories of musicians whose kids have been attending concerts since Day One and know how to behave at them and will just sit there and listen with rapt attention at the age of three, but I've always been pretty skeptical about these as well as jealous. I figure age 8 and 10 are about the right age for mine.

Last night, we were at a concert featuring a solo pianist playing Debussy and Tschaikovsky, a solo violinist playing something by an early-20th-century composer named Eugene Ysaye--who was fortunately an admirer of Beethoven rather than Stravinsky, so it was easy on the ears, and a quartet playing Mendelssohn.

It was, I think, the first concert where I could focus more on the music than on how the children were doing. We've done a lot of classical music stuff in the past year, mostly because of Madison's involvement with the Bach Children's Chorus. (At least one of them (Messiah) got so late that Audience Member Ella needed to go home at intermission.) But I can't think of anything that we went to just as a family to go hear some classical music. David and I have seen other performances on our own in the last 12 months, but I guess we've just figured we'd have a better time without them, not to mention the needless expense of buying tickets for bored kids. So last night was kind of a first.

When I see live music performed, I get very involved in the music. I usually focus on the cellists, given that I play cello (sort of). But I'm not great at focusing on more than one thing at a time, so I'm sure that part of the reason we haven't brought the kids to these things before is that I didn't want the distraction of having to focus on them at the same time as the music.

I said it was the first concert where I could focus MOSTLY on the music, I didn't say entirely. At least 40% of my attention, especially during the second half, was focused on making sure that Ella could lean against me comfortably as her energy started to ebb...after all, normally she'd be asleep at that time. I *really* didn't want her to squirm or fidget, because that makes for a bad experience for those sitting behind us. And I *really* wanted her experience of the concert to be positive, because then it makes the next one that much easier. So, I confess, enough of my brain was focused on the kids' experience that I couldn't really enjoy the Mendelssohn.

It's easy enough to say, "Get a grip, Deb, relax and don't worry about the kids, or how they behave, they're fine, they'll squirm a bit, it doesn't matter. Don't let it detract from your own enjoyment of the music." Sorry. I know this is the right way to do it, but I just. can't. do. it. I figure it's better to face that up front.

Next time it will be easier for me, I'm sure. And eventually they'll enjoy it so much that I can ignore them entirely. I hope.

The pianist soloist was a 12-year-old prodigy who is at Juilliard. Madison was equally impressed with his playing and with the fact that he started taking college classes when he was 5. 5! Her eyes were round. Age 5! She couldn't get over it.

--------------------------------

In other classical-music news, Ella has decided to join the Bach Children's Chorus. Madison joined when she was 8, but I just didn't think Ella was ready for it. You see, you have to have a passion for this kind of thing in order to carry yourself through the discipline and rigor of all of the practicing. Madison has always had it. She loves a challenge. She rises to the occasion. Ella just tends to go with the flow and enjoy life. She sang with the BCC on their trip to DC this past May, mostly because they needed more people and the repertoire was limited and she could do it. But I didn't push her to join, and she kept saying she'd probably do it next year when she's 9. I didn't mind at all, because the last thing I need for our home schooling day is to add in something else to make the kid do. I definitely didn't want to deal with whining, and have to shell out some bucks for the privilege, to boot.

But then, on Thursday morning, Ella surprised us all by saying she wanted to join. She wanted to go to Chorus Camp with Madison that day. She knew what she was getting into, she said, and she was ready.

Well, okay! Go for it, girl.

The director is going to make her go through the whole audition process in the next couple of weeks before official rehearsals start. Okay, I see the point, but now I have to get the child prepared for the audition. Readers of this blog will remember that I actually broke out in hives helping Madison get ready for that audition 2 years ago. That won't happen this time, though, because the director is going to accept Ella...Ella can sing and the chorus needs the extra bodies and the money...and she won't want to alienate me, either, even though I'm no longer president of the board of directors. So it will be a bit much to whip the child into shape on the Bach and Handel pieces she needs to know, but we'll do it.

And, I have to say, Ella was great, yesterday. She kept requesting over and over in the car to hear the piece she doesn't know, and was practicing and practicing. She's in tune great...she may be a natural soprano where Madison and I are altos, she hits the high A effortlessly...but she's a kind of whisper-singer, I can't hear her that well. I figure I'll let the director deal with volume, and just focus on getting her to know the stuff inside and out.

So, Ella is taking something really seriously, possibly for the first time. I don't think she'll even need a lecture about how once she starts this she needs to finish it, she can't weasel out in the middle or whine about it. She really knows that already, I think. I hope I'm right.

-----------------------------------


And now for something entirely different...

We're going on a Bat Hike tonight! One of the girls' favorite naturalists is leading one. I tried to get in at the nature center on Wednesday, but the guy told me that it was closed, they were all full. But Liz is letting us in, telling us that "there is always room for the Ross family." I feel so honored.

Hurray for freedom of the press

It's still legal here in the U.S. My friend Reena posted this:

http://llph.typepad.com/life_liberty_the_pursuit_/2009/08/equality-for-all.html

Utterly American.

I may have taught her too much

Madison and Ella are playing with Ella's Littlest Pet Shop set.

They decided to have the little animals do a play, choreographed and everything.

Madison started making up a song that the mice should sing to introduce themselves.

I proposed that they just use the "Square Dancing Mice" song from SteveSongs. They like that song, and it seemed to be perfect for the purpose.

"Mom, Mom, we considered that," said Madison. "But there was a copyright dispute."

I had the perfect face for radio this morning

Yesterday, the media group that owns several radio stations in town asked me to become a regular on Friday mornings, on two of their most popular stations...starting TODAY.

Of course, I said yes. I like being on the radio. The exposure is priceless. And it went very, very well; I hadn't expected it, but for one of the stations (WARM 101.3), I basically blended in to become just part of the gang on the radio for an hour or so, from 7:40-8:40. I'm so happy that I now get to do this every week! And they even gave me my own parking spot in the garage...B-80. Whoa.

I will confess to a bordering-on-irrational love of successful P.R.

Oh, and speaking of successful P.R., here is a link to yesterday's News 10 NBC spot on KidsOutAndAbout.com. MSNBC even picked it up! It's been quite a week.

"Required"

We got an unofficial-looking white folded-over-and-taped printout today from our local school district's office, from a heretofore-unknown-to-me "Census" department.

Dear Resident:

For planning and reporting purposes, it is required

Oh-ho! Required, is it? By what? By whom?

that the District know about all children in our district from birth to age 18 and if the child receives special education, from birth to 21.

If there are no changes it is NOT necessary to return this form.

Now, there's know about, and KNOW about. What does it all mean? There is no reference to what, by law, they need to know.

What they do "know" on the form is this: The girls' names, birthdates, gender, ethnicity, grade in 2009-2010, and the school they attend. (Interestingly, the school that is listed for them is:

Private School (Home Schooled)

I kinda like that wording.

But here's the catch: They got their birthdays wrong. That's right, some careless clerk made a typo on each girls' birthday (though they got the birth YEAR right for each).

The question is: Do I notice this? And, if I do notice it, am I actually legally obligated at this time to try to correct for the District's typo on this document? (It's clearly a typo...they got the same, incorrect, birthday.) I have to say, from a security perspective, I'm not too interested in documents winging around through the district with all of my girls' identifying info on it. Might be kinda nice just to leave the birth date wrong. The girls' quarterly reports and IHIPs have their correct birthdays on them, so I figure I'm probably covered legally, as I tell them the correct birthdays six times each year.

If there is a child living in your home that [sic] you suspect has a handicapping condition [sic] and has not been previously identified by the school for this condition, please check this box.

Fat chance.

Questions? Call the Census Department at____

Seriously considering asking them to show me the law.

Who says you can't go home?

I've been traveling with the girls for the past week, that's why I haven't blogged for a while. It was a hectic trip, but also the kind of trip where every night I looked around and thought how nice it was to be there, wherever "there" was that evening.

I brought the girls out to New Jersey first for a few days of fun with the sane branch of my family, then dropped them off at my friend Tatiana's in PA while I went up to visit/take care of my friend Anne who lives in New York's Hudson Valley and is about to have Baby #4.

During the course of the trip, I did a lot of criss-cross driving through New Jersey, the state of my birth and upbringing. I left NJ about 15 years ago, and since then have mostly felt aversion at the idea of going back, even for visits or for business. Rochester has been home in a way that NJ never was, never could be. I felt that the state had ground me down, not least because it is obscenely expensive to live in, the people as a whole are not particularly friendly or welcoming, and you spend much of what could be productive time sitting in traffic that sucks the life out of you. And though working in New York City for 4 years in my early 20s was a great experience, it too was intimidating. It was never *my* city. Leaving was the right thing to do.

But this week, there I was, age 40, driving through the Garden State by myself with the radio on.

Today's radio stations play LOTS of 80s music, and the New York City area is no exception. It was the music as much as the setting that plunged me right back into a vivid experience of what it was like to be Adolescent Deb. I heard Bon Jovi on the radio, and I remembered *exactly* what it was like to be 14, how I felt about the adults and kids I knew, what my take on the world was like then. The struggle to figure out what was the right thing to do, without guidance. The struggle to try to get through life and school without dissolving.

As I've said before on this blog, I was very different sort of person then. But now, I have an adult's understanding of what it all meant. And I'm old enough now that while I was absorbed in these memories this past week, I found that, remarkably, I could be both people simultaneously.

When I was a teenager and trying to figure everything out, I used to imagine myself older--35!--and life-toughened, going back in time to advise and comfort Teenage Deb. "What would I do if I were really, really wise? I used to ask myself. "I'll KNOW how to manage this in 20 years, but maybe I can just IMAGINE it now." I tried to be both people simultaneously then, too, but I was limited to what a 15-year-old could know.

Of course, as principled adults do, I've dissected my childhood for 20 years to determine what was right about it and what was wrong, and to decide what I'd replicate with my own kids and what I'd replace. But when I was in NJ this week, I suddenly felt that I could understand this in living color, not just theoretically. The experience brought back details that I'd forgotten, especially nice details that I'd suppressed in an attempt to put it all behind me. I understood, viscerally, the absolute necessity to a healthy later emotional life of not subjecting kids to too many things they have to endure; otherwise, ALL of the memories are clouded, even the good ones. In other words, "Well, at least it builds character" is pretty much bullshit.

This time, driving through New Jersey and New York City, it hit me that I was looking at it all with fresh eyes. In the intervening years, without realizing it, I'd somehow conquered New Jersey and New York. Really. It wasn't just that I drove into the city, which I'd done lots of times before when I was working there, but that I was doing it almost on a whim, to get a hair cut, and managing the traffic, tolls, and parking rates--not to mention what it costs for a Lexington Avenue trim--without blinking. The Big Apple had become No Big Deal.

When I was 23, I'd looked at that magnificent skyline from my bathroom window in Weehawken somewhat wistfully. The City meant hopes, dreams, possibilities, mystery. It was also edgy, and tough, and scary, and somehow inaccessible even though I was there every day. But this past Tuesday, as I was rounding the curve into the Lincoln Tunnel, I saw it differently. I felt sad, as I always do, seeing the gap where the Twin Towers should be. But I also saw the skyline prosaically. It was a place where I'd lived, and worked, and developed, and succeeded, and left. The 15 years from age 10 through age 25, without fanfare, clicked into a new place for me. New Jersey is now much more simply the place where I made the best of a bad situation than the scene of a tragic movie.

And how about those Bon Jovi songs that set these thoughts in motion? It was a "Two-Fer Tuesday" block of Bon Jovi: First, "Livin' on a Prayer" from 1986, and then "Who Says You Can't Go Home?" from 2005.

Almost poetic.

Something else you can get if you ask

Ella has dance camp on Tuesday mornings this summer. Somehow, it became a ritual to take her to the nearby McDonald's afterward on the way home. Not a healthful ritual, obviously. But a pleasurable one.

Two weeks ago, Ella got a Happy Meal with a Teeny Beany Baby. A sheep. You get the little stuffed animal, and then you can go online and create a persona for it, earn points during games so you can buy it things, etc. She was entranced with this sheep. She made a terrific online pink bedroom room with a bunk bed for Fluffy at Ty.com.

Well, last week, after dance camp, she wanted to try for another Teeny Beany Baby. She wanted a sheep to go with Fluffy. So she asked, "Do you just have to take what McDonald's gives you?" I said we could go inside and ask them rather than go through drive-through.

So we got up to the front counter, and I asked the young woman taking our order, "Um, is there any choice of Teeny Beany Babies, by any chance?"

"Well..." she said, rummaging through her supply of bags. "I got the skunk, I got two Grimaces, I got a Ronald, I got the sheep..."

"The SHEEP!" Ella and I both exclaimed excitedly at the same time. The young lady jumped a foot in the air and started laughing. Madison, of course, was embarrassed.

I felt, well, rather sheepish.

But Ella, Fluffy, and Puffy are very happy together.

You never know what you can get if you ask.

What you get if you ask

I was a very shy, geeky, introverted kid. Yes, really. People look skeptical when I tell them this, but it's true. I was never taught about how to BE around people; no one ever verbalized skills such as: "Stand up straight, look someone in the eye, and smile as you shake their hand confidently." I tended to fold in on myself. But I changed all that very deliberately when I was about 18, and grew into a style that I'm comfortable with.

One thing I never knew as a kid, because I was never taught to talk to people, is what you can get if you just ask. Or, more precisely, what you can get if you cheerfully offer "value for value." It's an aspect of the beauty of capitalism, only without cash.

Now, I'm not talking about asking for handouts, for people to be generous with me out of the kindness of their heart because I need something that they have. No, I'm really talking about how it's important to connect with people who have something I can use, and that their giving it to me actually benefits them.

Of course, to get stuff, you have to give stuff.

In my case, what I can offer is visibility and great public relations through my web site. This week, my project was to get hotels and attractions to give me free packages to give away to KidsOutAndAbout.com readers as part of a big campaign I'm doing to get more subscribers to my Thursday morning e-newsletter. So far, in just three days of casual work on this, I have FIVE great packages donated for overnight vacations to various places within driving distance of Rochester. All I had to do was connect with managers personally, explain easily what I can give them (lots of visibility to exactly the market they're looking to attract) and ask for them to donate. And they did, with pleasure.

Similarly, going on the radio gives my web site a lot of exposure whenever I do it. So I asked my main radio personality contact, Marti Casper of 93.3, if she'd like me on next week. (I get visibility, they get a cheerful, articulate, I-love-Rochester guest.) Not only did she say yes, but she told me that one of their sister stations was asking her to let me know the next time I'm on, so THEY could have me on too.
(Update: The media group that owns both radio stations has just asked if I would consider being on every Friday!)

The point (and why this is a really good lesson to teach to kids) is: None of this would happen if I didn't ASK, and ask again, all the while happily and in a non-pushy way offering something I know is valuable. Even though folks like the radio station know I exist and like having me on, they rarely initiate having me on, it's usually me telling them I'm available if they want me.

So what I want my kids to take away from this: The idea that "if you build it they will come" is pretty much a pie-in-the-sky platitude. Build it, absolutely. Make it great. And then promote it like heck, but make sure not to be a pain in someone else's neck while you do it. It's a delicate balance.

It's important to keep both parts of this concept in mind for Everyday Activism, too: To be successful at changing the world, you need to build something whose value is attractive to others, and you need to promote it happily and cheerfully rather than defensively or bitterly.

Silvia is probably a better homeschooling mom than I am

Silvia, a nice hs-ing mom I met when we lived in Charlottesville for a year-and-a-half a few years ago, is far more hip than I. She and her kids are raising scorpions.

I always say I'd go to the ends of the earth and back for my kids, but this is something I would never, ever do. Just, no.

No in an "I-can't-vaguely-imagine-doing-this-even-though-it's-so-darned-cool-in-theory" kind of way. No in a "despite-all-of-the-valuable-experience-I'm-robbing-my-kids-of" kind of way.

I console myself with the idea that it's good to know one's limits.

Sorry, girls.

Three more agents to reject me before I try again

Three agents I met at the conference in late May still have my manuscript. As of today, they have had it for eight weeks.

Eight.

Yes.

Apparently, this is par for the course in publishing. I almost prefer the prompt rejections. Publishing etiquette doesn't permit me even a teeny-weeny hey-I'm-still-out-here-and-you-have-my-manuscript-maybe-it-got-lost? email to the agent for another four weeks! It's like that part of life is on hold. A manuscript held hostage.

I'm going to get old waiting for this to get published.

No matter, I'm slammed this summer anyway, what with real clients requesting real work (that THEY want to see back to them WELL before eight DAYS has elapsed, thank you very much, none of this eight-week nonsense), and with the slam-one-technological-door-open-another-and-run-right-through-it quality that this summer has had as I work to expand KidsOutAndAbout.com outside of New York. So I haven't had that much time to write...

except I've done my best. I've even started another book. A snappier book. A hipper book. One that is less 1950's and more 2000's (to quote from one of my stack of Frontier Team rejections). One that could actually win awards. One whose topic will be actually controversial, even--probably--with my writing buddy.

But no worries, Frontier Team fans (all four of you!), I'm still working on Book Two. Max is gonna solve that mystery, yes he is. I just have to work out the details. And, you know, finish writing the thing. In my copious spare time. As my own personal comedy duo sings "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" in the background.

(Hey, come to think of it, maybe that's not a bad whodunnit topic...)

The bodies of the mangled mourning doves litter the baseball diamond. Eager Little Leaguers arrive for practice, gloves in hand, but flee in tears at the carnage before them. Turkey vultures circle overhead, hoping for an opportunity to dart in and seize a corpse for an afternoon snack. The parents eye the scavengers warily as they herd their permanently scarred players back into the minivans. Is it a job for The Frontier Team?

No, no, it most definitely is not. I don't even write that way, for pity's sake.

I think I'd better go to bed.

The DS2

Madison and Ella have started a singing/dancing troupe which they are calling the "DS2" which stands for Dancing-Singing-2.

For the last three days, they have been rehearsing for about 45 minutes to an hours (seriously!) choreographing fun and funny routines to songs they know. We get a new routine each night. They dress in black and white, or all white, or all black, and wear black top hats.

The first day, the routine was to Tom Lehrer's "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park." Then Cole Porter's "They All Laughed." And last night they chose "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."

They call themselves "Hope (Ella) and Joy (Madison), the D...S...2!" They are remarkably like Penn and Teller; Ella is silent (except when she's singing) and Madison does all the talking. And they even physically resemble Penn & Teller, what with Madison being much bigger and wearing glasses. (After we realized this, we showed them a Penn & Teller YouTube, a clean one: their appearance on The View in Las Vegas a few years ago. It will be so much fun when they're ready to see "Bullshit!" but it's just a bit too foul-mouthed right now.)

They both sing well, actually. And Ella dances well. As for Madison...well, at times Madison's klutziness is almost aggressive. But it works pretty well for the comedy effect.