Listen Up, Mr. President

When you live in Washington D.C. as we did for many years, celebrities are not limited to Snooki, Lindsay and Britney. If you really want to get the interns revved up, spot Nancy (Pelosi), Harry(Reid) and now John (Boehner) dining at one of the venerable steak houses near Capitol Hill.
That's why having Roberto Rodriguez come to dinner at our house last night was a really big deal.
Mr. Rodriguez is Special Counsel to the President on Education, a handsome 35-year-old dynamo who advises Barack Obama on national school policy. He is, by Beltway standards, a minor celebrity.
In our world, he's a major one: Roberto also happens to be my husband's oldest and dearest friend, a fellow zoo school graduate from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who once ran the City High Student Council with Jim. (Three cheers for the City High "Pegasi," which was a somewhat dorky yet understandable mascot for Grand Rapids' gifted and talented youth.)
To know Roberto is to love him and in no time at all, six-year-old Elizabeth was perched on his lap as we grown-ups talked politics.
We explained to the twins that Roberto works for President Obama to make schools better.
"Is there any message you want Roberto to give to Mr. Obama?" I asked the kids. "Is there anything we as a country should be doing to improve your school?"
I, for one, could stand to do away with the TAKS tests but then, that's more of a state issue...
William, meanwhile, monkeyed with a paper plate, thoughtfully chewing his tongue.
"There should be more ice cream," he said, all business. "Every day there should be ice cream."
Roberto, ever the problem solver, asked for clarification.
"And should we have hot fudge available?" he prompted. "How about sprinkles? Do we want just vanilla or choclate, too?"
But Will wanted things simple.
"Vanilla would be good," William said.
"Well, that's important to know," Roberto said. "The House is considering the Child Nutrition Bill this week."
Who says officials don't listen to their constitutents?

Louse in De House

I am a big fan of the story “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” the children’s book in which one action leads to another. I think there should be a version for grown-ups called “If Your Husband Goes Overseas on Business.” Here is my version.

If your husband goes to China on business, your daughter will come home with a head full of lice.
If you go to the drug store to purchase a shampoo to remove the lice, there will be only one kit left. You will need two.
If you carefully apply the pesticide, which is supposed to kill anything alive, then spend three hours combing out your daughter’s thick, long hair with an inch-wide metal nit comb, you will notice at the end of your grooming session one very alive louse. He will have very alive friends.
If you call your pediatrician in a panic, he will put you on hold.
If your doctor suggests your massage mayonnaise into your daughter’s scalp as a homeopathic remedy, you do so only to realize that you have been using Light Mayonnaise instead of Regular Mayonnaise. It is likely lice will enjoy Light Mayonnaise.
If your aunt comes to visit you from New Mexico, you will send her directly to a seedy laundromat with 14 loads of lice-infested bedroom textiles.
If your aunt is at a coin-operated laundromat, she will not have enough quarters to get the job done.
If she cashes in her remaining bills for coins, she will run out of detergent.
If you are simultaneously doing laundry at home, your washing machine will break.
If your washing machine breaks, the toilet in your master bedroom will sympathize and begin spraying dirty water soaking your carpet.
If you need to soak up funky toilet water, you will realize your aunt has every towel in the house in the back of her car.
If you get the toilet water cleaned up, you will still need to vacuum up the lice.
If you try to vacuum up the lice, you will realize your vacuum is on its last legs and that you are out of clean vacuum bags.
If you spend a whole entire week raking through your child’s hair with a painful comb, you will feel guilty and let her play with a chemistry set.
If you let her play with a chemistry set, she will spill every single chemical on the kitchen floor where your baby is crawling.
If you spend an hour cleaning the brick surface on your hands and knees, your mother will helpfully dump your dirty mop water into the downstairs toilet.
If she pours the sludge down the toilet, several rags will go down with it and clog the pipes causing the potty to overflow onto your clean floors.
If you find yourself covered in toilet water, lice shampoo, mayonnaise and dead bugs, your husband will call from China and tell you he’s having a wonderful time at the World’s Fair.
If, after a week, you finally get your child cleaned up and the house deloused, you will get an e-mail from a first grade teacher informing you that Friday is Hat Day.
If it’s Hat Day in First Grade, your child will provide a habitat for a new crop of lice.

The Mystery Reader

Being a Mystery Reader in first grade is a little like volunteering to step on the circus stage--you know darn well something funny will happen with the clowns and that it will likely involve water.
Yet, it is nice to raise your hand and be chosen.
Thus, I marched off to the elementary school last week with my two reads tucked under my arm and a theme: It's good to be quirky.
Mrs. E. turned off the lights as I entered and did a drum roll...surprise...it's Will's mom!
I parked myself in the rocker.
"Our two stories today are about being quirky and how that's a good thing," I told the kids clustered on the Crayola-colored rug. "Who knows what quirky means?"
Noone knew.
"Well, it means being unique in a special way," I said. "Our baby Charlotte is quirky because she likes to do chores. When she crawls, she pulls herself around on her tummy, dusting the floor."
I added that I'm quirky--I drink Diet Coke with my breakfast!
I offered other examples: Our grandma screams really loud when she rides kiddie amusements even though she's in her seventh decade of life, Will's sister separates all her food into categories before she eats them, our daddy can snore so loud you can hear him one floor down.
I then proceeded to read "Imogene's Antlers," the story of a British girl who, wouldn't you know it, grows antlers! I follow up with Dav Pilkey's "Dog Breath," about a canine who saves the day despite needing to brush and floss.
Then it was time to see how well we did with retention.
"Okay, so we know being quirky is a good thing," I said. "Who here is quirky?"
One little boy offered that he's quirky because he wears his hair in a braid on top of his head; another girl lives on a farm with a horse.
Will's friend Sandy has a dog who has really, really short legs but runs surprisingly fast.
They were getting into the swing of things now.
"Ohh, ohh, I have one," yelled a kid in a Cub Scout uniform hopping up and down. "I have a dog who wears a diaper and pees blood!"
Next time I think I will go to the circus.
At least that's a more predictable afternoon.

Crawler Camp

I've done many crazy things in the name of motherhood, but crawling across the living room floor on all fours barking like a dog with a baby rattle in my mouth might be the nuttiest.
Actually, I wasn't just barking. I was also shaking my head back and forth and sort of growling. Being consheentious, I wanted to get the part of Beagle just right.
The simultaneous goal, however, was to encourage Charlotte to creep, a milestone that at 9.5 months had failed to materialize.
I had pretty much given up on crawling and figured it didn't matter: After all, Elizabeth sat on her tuffet until she was 13 months old then stood up and walked across the room. She's since tested into our school district's gifted and talented program so I figured she didn't miss out on much.
So when all the other babies at Kindermusik zipped across the mats on all fours, I sat back and smiled.
"Charlotte has surveyed our flooring options which include brick and wood," I told another mother, "She's happy instead to relax and preserve her knees."
Not only was the baby thrilled with the arrangement--who wants to look down at the world after sitting up?--but so was I. With Charlotte immobile, I didn't have to worry about scrubbing the floor or packing up the Legos.
Imagine my surprise when my pediatrician raised a red flag--which I dismissed.
(This is my third baby, for crying out loud, let's not rush her! She'll creep when she's ready.)
Then my dear gal pal Michelle M., who is also a pediatric physical therapist, forced me to swallow a cold dose of hard reality.
"Crawling is imperative," she said in her kind doctor-y voice. "It promotes visual perception and strengthens the arms which enables kids to form the correct pinscher grasp used for writing later."
It turns out that crawling as a baby is linked to school success: Kids who don't color or write well in kindergarten generally never crawled.
(Creeping also does a bunch of other important things but I'm several days out from the conversation so I can't remember what exactly, but the gist is that kids must go through this phase to ensure their bodies and minds work properly.)
And what of Elizabeth?
"You got lucky," my friend said. "If Charlotte's not up on all fours and swaying back and forth by ten months, give me a call for clinical assessment."
Michelle's prescription: 30 to 40 minutes of belly time per wake period. This translates to 90 minutes per day.
Now, I will blatently ignore a middle-aged male pediatrician, but I will never, ever ignore the advice of a fellow hot momma with a Ph.D. (I will disclose I've spent thousands of dollars at Michelle's clinic where William worked to quit tiptoe walking--also a seemingly harmless quirk that causes big problems--and thus I know the value of early intervention.)
So, I dutifully spent an afternoon last week rearranging the furniture and laying down a huge foam mat: Crawler Camp would commence immediately.
Charlotte was not pleased.
Four minutes into our exercises and she planted her face into the foam, looking up at me with a pleading look that said "Can I please just have the camp water bottle and T-shirt and call it quits?"
"Listen, kid," I told her, "If you want to accurately pen your incredibly long English name when you're five, you're going to have to do this."
And so we've been at it now for a week. I've alerted all family members to the situation and now even the twins--the biggest enablers of us all--are forcing Charlotte to climb over the Mt. McKinley of pillows. Why just yesterday, the big kids even played Yoga Class with Charlotte, deftly demonstrating the various poses they'd learned in preschool.
Still, no success. And no real interest.
"See, Charlotte," I tell her, "If you can crawl, you can get whatever toy you want."
She rolls her big, brown eyes at me and whines like a dolphin both harpooned and marooned.
Hence my dog act.
If we have to put this sweet cherub through Crawler Camp, at least I'll try to make it fun for her.
No wonder I'm the one sporting rug burn on my knees.

EPILOGUE: Baby Charlotte began doing an Army crawl at 11 months. She first dragged herself to an electrical outlet then scooched over to the wastebasket to lick it. I abruptly canceled the meeting with the PT but now worries she is going to pull a lamp on her head... I should be more careful what I wish for...