The Kindergarten Chronicles - Part 3

Each school has its own application process, which is just a little bit different from everyone else’s application process. For the charters, there are the mysterious lotteries. Some are public. Some are not. One emails you the lottery results results. One writes back in the self-addressed stamped envelope you were supposed to enclose with the application, but I saw dozens, if not hundreds of parents hand in applications at the open house without the self-addressed stamped envelope. One, after a public lottery, writes you a letter giving you your number weeks after the event. The new one promises to get on the phone and call if you get selected.

Lotteries take place early to mid April. Results stagger in. You need to pre-register at your zoned school (during school/work hours) in Jan/Feb/March, and then you need to show up in person, with your bored or bewildered child to fill out pages of forms and present folders of documents during the first two weeks of April. Also, during school/work hours.

Liana did not attend any of the open houses or orientations with me. When I first started discussing potential schools with her, she became angry and obstinate. “I WANT TO GO TO THE RENAISSAINCE SCHOOL!” she proclaimed. The kid never forgets a thing, and she remembered that long ago day when I took her with me to vote at Renaissance, and said she might go to school there. That is the school that, last year, accepted 40 out of 1495 applicants.

After listening to me sing the praises of the various potential schools, and after overhearing dozens (or more) adult conversations about kindergarten possibilities, she has become resigned to the reality. We don’t know where you are going to kindergarten. It will be a surprise!

At an early-March birthday party, one father proclaimed that he was going to attend all of the open lotteries, record the names of the lottery winners, and publish them on a community forum. I didn’t really know him well, and I was not sure about the idea of publishing the names. But as the first public lotteries approached, I weighed the pros and cons of leaving Liana with a babysitter to attend, (I never leave her with a babysitter) or trying to get someone who is attending to tell me if her name was called.

I approached the dad and asked him if he really planned on attending the lotteries and reporting on the results. He said he had revised his plan. Although he was going to attend, he would just report on the names of children whose parents requested that he do so. He told me to email his wife (who I really know only to say hello to), but after running into her in the street and accosting her on the lottery topic, she invited me to email her Liana’s details, and I did.

In the meantime, I had gotten notice from our zoned school, PS 212. They wanted me to appear on April 1 (less than a week after receiving the letter), between 9-11 AM, with Liana and gobs of paperwork. I had an important meeting scheduled at 9:30 in Harlem that morning, which I had no intentions of missing. I called to reschedule, hoping that I would have lottery results before hand, and that I would be able to blow off the registration all together. I was scolded, told that it did not sound like I was very interested in getting my child into kindergarten, reminded the NYC public schools do not guarantee a kindergarten seat, and assured that they had a huge waiting list already. I stated that the NYC Department of Education Website said that I had until April 15 to register after having received the letter. The voice on the other end clucked, and grudgingly agreed to allow me to come in on April 11.

Wow. I have a more flexible work schedule than most, and it seemed like an unreasonable burden for me to take off two work mornings in two months to register my kid at a school I did not even want her to attend. How many parents lost pay on those two days? Or just pissed off their bosses? In these tough fiscal times, this does not seem like a great policy. Or perhaps it is. Parents unaware of the complex procedures, or unable or unwilling to take off work, might not burden the public schools with the presence of their kindergarten aged children, in a year in which thousands of teachers are slated to be laid off. Quite a few kids might just be staying with grandma until first grade.

The Kindergarten Chronicles - Part 2

By mid-winter, it was rare to have a conversation with an adult that did not revolve around the kindergarten application process. There was the gifted and talented exam. The “Meet the Principal Nights.” The open houses at the charter schools. My schedule was booked.

The Renaissance open house was a nightmare. The line to get in wrapped around the block. It was freezing rain. So many of the parents I met on the line did not even seem interested in the concept of a progressive education. I stood wedged between two families, each of whom were hoping for financial aid to a Catholic school, but Renaissance was their second choice. Ummm. Their first choice is the most structured, conservative possibility, and their second choice was the school where the kids call the teachers by their first names and pursue a broad, liberal arts education in an environment of loosely controlled chaos? K-12 is a huge plus.

Fell in love with the principal of Growing up Green. Constant student assessment, and classroom activities based on student interests. An onsite garden. Ecology theme. Lots of field trips. I feel like Liana is really drawn to the natural sciences. A great option for her. K-5.

Our World Neighborhood is more structured. Social studies theme. Each month they focus on a part of the world, and a value. Values include kindness and honesty and citizenship. The walls of the school are covered with student projects. Student writing is evaluated, not graded. A hallway was transformed into our solar system, with black walls spotted with stars, and balls transformed into planets hung from the walls. A parent asked if it was a permanent exhibit. The principal said no. The hallway would be transformed into a rainforest the following month. K-8.

Academy of the City hasn’t opened yet. They don’t even have a building. But also a real progressive education.

Neighborhood public schools were in the process of redistricting, and there was great confusion about where the district lines fall now. I don’t like PS 212, my districted school. It is across the street. So easy. Beautiful building. Crowded classrooms. Traditional instruction. They watch videos for recess. It is a “magnet school” for “literacy and technology.” Whatever that means. I know wonderful parents who love the place. I don’t. Kids districted for PS 69 can also apply to some other schools, including a bilingual program for K-2.

One thing was for sure. The wonderful community of friends who play together at Travers Park, who have attended pre-k together, would not stay together. They would be scattered to the wind.

The Kindergarten Chronicles - Part 1

The Fall of 2010 was a more innocent time.

I took Liana with me to my polling station to vote, and as we walked through the Renaissance School, I stated that Liana might go to school there when she was big. Big, as in kindergarten. It seemed a lifetime away.

I had always imagined sending my child to the Renaissance School. A few short blocks from home and work, leaders in progressive education, they have been integrated into the fabric of the community for more than a decade. They have a pretty diverse student population (20% white, 20% black, 42% Hispanic, 18% Asian), and their students can be seen on youtube doing interesting theater projects or having huge meetings in which students and teachers together work to set the school’s agenda in face of budget cuts .
They offer a strong K-12 liberal arts education, with emphasis on project based learning rather than test preparation. They have linkages with National Geographic, a rooftop greenhouse, Spanish and Mandarin instruction, strong parent involvement.

Of course any child of mine would attend the Renaissance School.

Then reality set in.

The top of the admissions page on their website states that 1,495 students applied for last year’s 40 lottery openings. Go ahead and read those numbers again. Do the calculations in your head. Within weeks of the innocent trip with Liana to my polling station at the Renaissance School, reality set in. And the frenzied kindergarten application process had begun.

“So mommy. Are you going to adopt another kid, or what?” Liana asked me earlier this summer.

I’d certainly thought about it. I thought about adopting two before Liana was even home. But life gets busy and routines get comfortable and I am getting older and the world of international adoption changes, and it had fallen to the back burner.

But Liana’s words gave me the push that I needed.

Most of you know this already. But it is official. I am paperchasing for adoption number two. I would like to adopt a little girl, one or two years younger than Liana, from Ethiopia.

Liana is BEYOND excited.

I have explained to her that it is going to take a very very very long time for her little sister to come home. I am sort of thinking Fall/Winter 2011.

Liana nods stoically, and says “Ok mommy. I tell you what. I’ll go to school on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and you bring my baby sister home on Thursday. Ok?”

That is a very very very long time indeed. But it will actually take even a little longer than that.

Liana is a social kid, and she is happiest when she is with a group. In a clan. In the middle of something busy and noisy. I know that sisterhood will ultimately be great for her. But there will be difficulties too. She promises she will share her things generously. We have talked about the fact that she will get less individual attention. That if both she and the little one are crying, I’ll pick up the little one first.

She nods, stoically.

I asked her what she would do if her little sister broke her favorite toy. Without missing a beat, she proclaimed “I’ll put her in time out.”

Ummm. Liana has been in time out about 3 times in the past year. And certainly never for breaking something. I suddenly felt very insecure about my own parenting, as my daughter’s words seemed to contradict my basic philosophies.

We reviewed the fact that time out is only used when mommy asks Liana to do something once, twice, and then three times, and Liana still doesn’t do it. We also established that mom, not Liana, will be responsible for enforcing household rules with the little one.

Liana agreed.

So I asked her again. “What would you do if your little sister broke your favorite toy?”

She thought about it, and then said:

“At first I’ll be angry. And then I’ll be sad. And then I’ll forgive her. Because that is just what little sisters do.”

And I hugged my beautiful, bright, amazing little girl, and regained my parenting confidence again.

On with the paper chase.

Friends

I love Liana's preschool. I love the philosphy, and the way in which community input is incorporated into practice. The teachers are exceptional. And I love the camera in the classroom that lets me peek in and see how Liana is spending her days.

But most of all, I love the friendships that Liana has developed. Her peers have become so central to her being. She tells stories of things that they do. She speculates about how they might respond to challenging situations. She misses them when they are sick or on vacation. She craves their input, and weighs the pros and cons of their suggestions. But mostly, she enjoys their company.

Combinations

Liana proclaimed she wanted a snack. I made the usual snack suggestions. A granola bar? A banana? Trisket crackers with peanut butter? Some blueberries? We've avoiding yogurt and cheese because of a nagging cold or allergy. Almonds? Raisins? Each of my suggestions was met with disdain.



So Liana announced that she was going to decide herself. She went into the kitchen and started opening cabinets. She was delighted to find rice cakes on a low shelf, and took them out and stated with absolute certainty, that she was having rice cakes as a snack. She held the package, and thought about it. She then said she wanted peanut butter on the rice cakes. Thought about it some more, and went on to state that she wanted blueberries on top of the peanut butter on top of the rice cake.



It seemed odd at first. But not in a bad way. And the more I thought about it, the more I decided that it was sort of like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But even healthier.



_______________________________



We had a bad weekend. Liana had a fever on Saturday morning. We went to the doctor, spent an hour and a half in the waiting room, by which point the fever was gone and she was starving, so we went out to eat at Jahn's on the way home. Then we both took a tumble crossing 37th Ave. I skinned my knees. She banged her chin. On the same place that she banged her chin last month getting out of the tub. My sweet little girl, with yet another boo boo on her beautiful face.



Sunday I decided to have a calm, neighborhood day, just to make sure she was really ok. She woke up in the morning, and took her new safety scissors, and starting cutting up some scraps of paper. She announced that she was going to make a flower, and that we would have to go to the store to get glue. Seemed reasonable. So we did. We got home, and she took two popsicle sticks, (which she had hidden after eating popsicles the day before), and some pine needles she had collected, and glued the cut paper and pine needles onto the popsicle sticks.



I was impressed.



She went on to take an empty paper towel holder (I am so NOT artsy! I swear this was ALL her doing) and wrapped the paper towel holder with paper towels from another roll, and then announced we needed to visit Antonia to get tape. (Note my lack of basic art supplies.) So we took the flower and the paper towel holder to Antonia's, and she taped the flower to her paper towel holder vase.



Antonia and I enthusiastically praised her creation.



And she announced that when she grows up, she is going to be an artist. And that she is going to paint pictures and cut bushes in to the shape of chickens and giraffes, and make sculptures out of ice too.



_________________________



This morning Liana announced that she wanted to wear one pick sock, and one white sock. In order to keep her feet "really warm."



I almost said yes. I like the odd combinations that she is making in so many aspects of her life. Sometimes I fear that she has a real conformist streak, and I've been delighted with this creative risk taking. But I decided that if I sent my kid with the bandage on her chin to school with mismatched socks, my parenting skills might seriously come into question.



So after some debate, we settled on pink.

My daughter, the New Yorker

I was getting really tired of the snow, and the boots and the snowsuit and whatnot. So one day last week I announced that we were walking to school in our sneakers, rather than our boots. Liana was dubious, but she agreed.

So once we got out on the sidewalk, Liana exclaimed:

"There's no snow on the sidewalk! If there was snow on the sidewalk, we would have to wear our boots."

Ummm. While I was delighted with the complexity of the sentence, I was a little surprised to hear the NY syntax. You KNOW I don't say "if there was." So, it is clear. My role as primary influence in her life is fading already. And she talks like a New Yorker.

And just to prove that she is a real NY'er, here she is taking the train to see Elmo Live at Madison Square Garden.

A marvelous time was had by all.

Oh. And they were just pretending to be asleep on the subway.

Liana loves rhymes.

Well, she doesn’t quite get the concept of rhymes. But she knows she loves them. We’ve done the “Jack and Jill went up a hill. Look! Jill and hill rhyme” stuff. Fox and box rhyme. Pat and sat rhyme. She loves it, and is currently searching for examples of rhyming words all around her.

But she also seems to think that any words that contain the same sounds rhyme. For the past couple of weeks, she has pointed out, for example, various words starting with the SH sound, and exclaiming that they rhyme. I nod, and point out that the beginning of the words sounds the same, and that we call that alliteration. “Can you say alliteration?” I go on to explain that rhyming is when the end of the words sounds the same. She rolls her eyes, or sometimes even stamps her foot in frustration, and proclaims “Well I think they rhyme!”

Another day:

“Mommy! Person and purple! They rhyme!”

Wow Liana! Person and purple both start with the “per” sound, and they both start with the letter P. Want to find other words that start with the letter P?

“But they RHYME!”

Earlier this week, rhymes took on a new life of their own.

“Mommy! Mouse and cheese! They rhyme!”

“Liana, mouse and cheese go together, because a mouse likes to eat cheese. But they don’t sound the same, so we don’t call that a rhyme. Mouse rhymes with house. Cheese rhymes with please.”

My explanations have been met with frustration on her part. Which of course, is the last thing I want to do. She is finding connections. Thinking. Reasoning. I want to encourage this thoughtful exploration of the world around her.

But when I say that a pair of words don’t rhyme, she folds her arms, stamps a foot, turns away from me in frustration and says “Well I think they rhyme!”

I think I missed the memo on how to deal with this aspect of parenting….

Sleep and bedtime continue to be high drama at home. So the other night when she got out of bed and came barreling into the living room to announce in a loud, animated voice:

“Mommy! Pato and shoe! They rhyme!”

I responded with a cold and cranky instruction to return to bed.

But she was very excited. She kept repeating it. “Pato” waving her left arm with palm facing up, “shoe!” waving her right arm with palm facing up. “See? They rhyme.”

“Liana. It is time to go to bed. I want to see your head on that pillow.”

“Pato! Shoe! See?”

“Liana. Pato and shoe don’t rhyme. And you need to be in bed so that you get enough sleep so that you don’t get sick and so you have lots of energy at school tomorrow, right?”

As I am escorting her back to the bedroom, she tries one more time. “But if I say saaaa pato they do rhyme! They do!”

And then I realized. Saaaa pato. Zapato. Zapato is shoe in Spanish.

When she was a baby, and spoke more Spanish than English, she called her shoes “patos.” In the past year or so, she has rejected Spanish almost completely. But clearly a lot of it is still there.

What amazing things are going on in this little girl’s brain.

So we bid farewell to the 00’s. The decade in which I became a mom. The decade in which I became an orphan.

The momentous events of the decade will always be classified in my mind into three categories. Before my dad died. Before my mom died. After I adopted Liana. There was a painfully blurry time in the middle of my adoption process in which I was dealing with my mom’s sudden, unexpected death, and unexpected bureaucratic delays in my ability to complete my adoption. But that time will forever remain an uncategorizable blur in my mind.

I rang in the year 2000 on a suburban driveway in Cabo Rojo Puerto Rico, in what seems like another lifetime. The pre-teen boys who were setting off firecrackers in that driveway had never heard of ipods or blogs or youtube or social networking. And neither had I. No one, other than my father, talked about global warming. He was also obsessed with the dangers of religious fundamentalism. My sweet gentle father lived long enough to see some of his bizarre and quirky fears become part of the mainstream consciousness.

September 11 will be the defining moment of the decade for most. Then there was the blackout. The president who was not elected by the majority of voters. The wars here and there. Both of my parents died during the Bush years. I mourn that they did not live to see the election that was to follow. My daughter may be a tween the last year of the Obama administration. Maybe not. But maybe.

The ouster of Aristide in Haiti went almost unnoticed by the mainstream. As did the comically failed ouster of Chavez in Venezuela. Weapons of mass destruction failed to materialize. Genocide on Darfur got some attention.

On a personal note, the decade started as my beloved Adult Education Program (affectionately know my thousands as “The English School”) was deemed to fall outside of my agency’s strategic plan. But I fought hard for the program’s survival. My mom was begging me to send off resumes. My staff kept asking me if they should be sending off their resumes, and I kept answering honestly “I’m not sending off mine.” We did more than survive. A decade later, we are thriving. We serve 650-700 adult immigrants per day, as a proud program of the Queens Community House.

I lost two peers. Alexandra and Abby. Amazing women who died ridiculously young.

I lived in Guatemala for two months. Liana and I spent our days in the company of humming birds under the shadow of volcanoes spewing ash and smoke, speaking Spanish together while those around us often spoke in Mayan languages that may not survive a generation or two. Then we came home together to live in the nation’s most diverse zip code, surrounded by more languages than even I can name.

I became a mom. Later in life than most. Baby bottles replaced pool cues. Late nights in bars were replaced by early morning trips to museums and zoos. Kim Stanley Robinson was replaced by nostalgic Dr. Seuss and colorful board books with soft and bumpy things to touch. Early morning phone chats with mom were replaced with frantic attempts to create morning routines involving putting on socks and getting out the door with a dry diaper. Extensive potty training rituals replaced gaming. Ridiculously long work hours gave way to “learning how to delegate.” And a full night’s sleep became a thing of the past.

The decade ahead, I imagine, will be filled with dance and music and art and star gazing and chapter books. And the incomparable joy of watching beautiful Liana grow and learn and experience the world around her. Holograms? Check points at which we need to show our national ID cards? Space Tourism? I think the next decade will offer a small window of opportunity to bring Liana to see glaciers while they are still grand, and coral reefs before they are bleached beyond repair. Perhaps the Obama years will usher in a renaissance of sorts. Or perhaps the damage is already so deep that the decline of the empire in inevitable.

The one thing I can predict with certainty is that any predictions I make here today will look ridiculously naïve a decade from now.

This is so huge for me, I can’t even believe that it is real.

So here is the story.

I’m pretty sure that my earliest childhood memory is of being with my mom and dad in a place with big dinosaurs. No, they weren’t bones. They were big, huge, “real” dinosaurs. It was outdoors. It was sunny. There was dirt, or dust or some such thing on the ground. And the dinosaurs were SO BIG!

I asked my parents about the memory several times during adulthood, and both suggested museums. Or fantasy. But I knew that wasn’t right.

When my dad died, and my mom and I were packing up the home that they had shared together, somehow we came across IT. THE PICTURE. The picture of me, in my father’s arms, and the dinosaur in the background. In the picture, I was about 3 years old. My mom looked at the picture, puzzled. She did not remember it. We traveled a lot. It was clearly somewhere we had been. Somewhere that made a huge impression on me. She suggested some Midwestern stop. The world’s largest pencil, the world’s largest cornstack. A few dinosaur statues on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Certainly it was not a destination. Just somewhere we must have been on way to somewhere else. We later found yet another dinosaur picture. This time of my mom holding me in front of a stegosaurus. But it was the huge tyrannosaurs, and a brontosaurus that does not appear in the photos, that are permanently imprinted in my memory.

I’ve thought a lot about this memory over the years. About traveling. About how much I enjoyed the adventures I had with my parents. I’ve thought about it even more in the past year or so. I am now the mother of a three year old. She is a good traveler, who has already started to build up a set of experiences that will be the base for future travels. I’ve wondered if she will remember anything of these recent trips, of if they will all fade into nothingness.

So on the winter solstice I was pulling out old pictures. I pulled THE picture out again. There I was. A little girl my daughter’s age, being held in my dad’s arms, a huge tyrannosaurus rex right behind us. I dug deep into my mind. I am certain that this is my very oldest memory. I mourned the fact that I would never know where we were, my parents and the dinosaurs and I. But I celebrated the fact that I had the photo to confirm my memory. And I ran images of recent trips over and over again in my mind, trying to divine which images Liana might carry into adulthood.

A few days later, ironically on Christmas Eve, we went to the Hall of Science with some friends. Afterwards, we stopped in the shop where I hoped to buy one last minute present.

And then I saw it.

It was THE picture. No, I was not in it. But it was the same picture. From almost exactly the same angle. On the cover of a book on the 1964-65 World’s Fair.

In Flushing Meadow Park.

Hundreds of miles from my toddlerhood home, but only about 2 miles from my current home. My daughter’s toddlerhood home. Jackson Heights.

Flushing Meadow Park! Where Liana and I spend sunny weekend days riding the carousel and walking through the Queens Zoo and eating ice cream outside by the big fountain. Where Liana and I spend rainy/cold weekend days, running wild in the Hall of Science. Where Liana and I certainly spend 2-3 days a month.

My earliest toddlerhood memory, as if it were a surreal premonition, is of a special place where Liana and I have spent much of her toddlerhood together.

And as Liana grows up, she and I will walk together, literally and metaphorically, in the footprints of long-gone dinosaurs.

What a ridiculous summer to fall to winter it has been! I was sick in August/September. Then by October Liana had the flu. Then I got pink eye. And a sinus infection. And an ear infection. Then Liana got an ear infection. Then my sinus infection came back. Then we had a late night emergency room visit. And now it is December. I missed enormous amounts of work, and I feel like I’m treading water with my personal life. But somehow, in between all of the insanity, we’ve managed to fit in some of the stuff that pre-schoolers are supposed to do!

Liana’s fever broke just in time for the Halloween parade. We made a trip to the Brooklyn Zoo and a trip to the Farm Museum. And the Queens Zoo, of course. And a couple of trips to the Hall of Science. And Travis Park. But most importantly, we made it to Virginia and then Nags Head so that Liana could be pampered and spoiled and just loved up by cousins and a doting aunt.

So here is a pictorial retrospective of Liana’s autumn holidays and weekends. In between fevers.

Liana Turns Three!

Liana’s big birthday weekend continues. Yesterday she got to wear a birthday hat at school all day, and I brought all sorts of stuff to class and they had a little party there. No cake, so I brought watermelon. But there were noisemakers and pretty plates and birthday napkins and birthday cups with twisty straws and they sang Happy Birthday and she blew out a candle.

Then Gwennie came home after school and we had cake and more Happy Birthday and the kids played and had fun. Then lots of presents.

Today we did my big birthday present. We went to see the Lion King on Broadway. We’ve been watching videos of it on youtube, and she was excited. I loved it. For her, it was a bit too grown up. The opening scene was so amazing, with all of the animals appearing from every corner of the theater, the big Circle of Life number, and so much emotion, that she spent a big part of the first act asking when the animals were coming back. She cried when Simba’s father died. Given that she didn’t seem to be paying a lot of attention to the plot, I was surprised by her reaction. And then she was very worried about Simba, and wanted to know where he was. When he grew up, she refused to believe that adult actor was Simba, and she spent most of the second act arguing with me as I insisted that it really was Simba. Then I made a big deal when his father appeared to him, and told her that the people you love are always with you, and that was lost on her completely. As we were approaching the finale, which I knew she would enjoy, she kept insisting she had to use the bathroom. I held her off, we enjoyed the finale, and then were approached by some VIP in the theater. He was holding my camera, which apparently I had left by where we bought snacks during intermission. He had looked at the photos, and instructed staff to look for a little girl with black hair and a pink shirt! Now how great is that?

We then had a loud dinner at Planet Hollywood. I saw my first Jonas Brothers video, and Liana saw her first Michael Jackson video. Kind of suspect the Jonas Brothers won’t stand the test of time. But I could be wrong. Then we hung out in Times Square. Went to Toys R Us again. Nearly got arrested there last week because I buzzed on the way out and the cashier had not given me the receipt, and I got to meet the head of security who escorted us back to the cashier, who fortunately had the receipt right there by the register. Then back to Times Square. Liana loves sitting outside at the new little tables. Thanks Mayor Bloomberg. Then we kept all the dozing people awake on the 7 train home, as Liana kneeled on the seat and looked out the window and squealed with delight at the sights.

Much to my suprise, when we got home, Liana asked if we could go see the Lion King again. I said yes, and she was pleased. I think next year it will be a more meaningful experience. And I know I would enjoy seeing it again! But sometims I think she is wise beyond her years. She knows that it will mean more to her a little later on. Or maybe it is just that toddler/preschooler thing. Read it AGAIN!

Tomorrow Saya is coming over for yet more cake and one more round of Happy Birthday.

And so the terrible two’s are over. They actually weren’t terrible at all. It has been a wonderful year. I have enjoyed watching Liana transform from a cuddly, charming, joyous baby, into a bright, precocious, curious, caring little girl who is just so much fun to be with.

I love being Liana’s mom.

Things I've Read About President Obama

Our president is a communist socialist nazi muslim who is seeking to use healthcare reform to mask genocide against… I’m not sure. Genocide against some group of American people he doesn’t like.

He was born in Kenya AND Indonesia. I’ve seen the proof. It is amazing, actually.

Oh. And he is under the control of a foreign country. England. I have a pamphlet explaining all about that. Someone at a health care town meeting, waving a picture of the president sporting a Hitler mustache gave me that piece of literature. What distinguishes President Obama from past presidents is that he doesn’t love this country the way other presidents have.

And now he wants to talk to CHILDREN? CHILDREN? He wants to plant subliminal messages in their little developing brains. Indoctrinate them. Turn them into future communist socialist nazi muslims who don’t love America and who want to commit genocide against… someone. Perhaps he will promote the gay agenda. Mock the Bible. Perhaps he wants to use our SOCIALIZED educational system to promote SOCIALIZED healthcare. Turn children against the second amendment. Promote abortion.

I don’t think my daughter’s school will be televising the address. Although Liana did stay up late to see the election results shortly after her second birthday, I have trouble imagining the school successfully getting a bunch of 2-3 year olds to listen attentively and then discuss the content of his address.

Across the country, apparently, parents are planning on keeping their kids home from school rather than allow their children to listen to the president tell children to study hard and stay in school.

Is there a paradox here?