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

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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

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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.