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.

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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.

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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.