Very Important Xanthe

It may be 80 days until Xanthe's birthday, but she was the VIP in her kindergarten class this week.  She always makes sure everyone knows that she is "VI," but this week she has proof.  Her kindergarten teacher said so.  Xanthe was terribly excited to have me come and talk to her class about how important she is.  She kept walking me through it:  "It's right after the bell rings for recess.  So when you hear the bell ring, you come.  OK, Mom?  Now, when do you come?  Right after the bell rings."

My part on the program was a little weird.  It may have been because coming in contact with Xanthe's teacher makes me feel like I've been hit with a tranquilizer dart.  Her voice is so soothing, I just desperately want to lie down and take a nap.   Anyway, I told the class about Xanthe and held up the poster that she had glued pictures to.  I pointed to a picture and said, "This is Xanthe the very first day we met her.  See her little pink outfit?"  Then Xanthe piped in, "Ya!  And the pants didn't have a bum!"  Babies in China are potty trained right off the bat.  They don't wear diapers, and their pants are "split" up the crotch, so that if you squat, a convenient space opens up for potty purposes.  But what fool would try to explain that to a classroom of kindergartners?  Uh, me.  When I saw the confused looks, I turned to the other Chinese girl in the class and said, "Isn't that right, Jade?"  Oh my gosh, Jade was a year old when she left China.  She's not an expert on Chinese potty training!  She said, "Huh?"

Then, because I didn't know the kids' names, I called on one boy with a big band-aid on his forehead by saying, "Yes, band-aid boy?"  Other kids started giggling, and not in a nice way, and I thought, "I probably just doomed this poor five-year-old to a nickname he'll go to college with!  Poor kid.  What is wrong with me?  Eventually the question-and-answer time degenerated to questions like, "What is Xanthe's FIFTH favorite color?" and "What does she like to do best besides ballet, piano, eating, playing with her friends, going to school and being at the beach?"  I said to the teacher,  "How many questions do the kids get to ask?"  She cut them off and took down last week's VIP poster, a pink-and-brown-themed montage of pictures double-mounted on lacy, flowery backgrounds with computer-generated captions and antiqued paper edges, and hung up Xanthe's poster which...you've seen. No parental intervention whatsoever, and it shows in the scissor-fringed edges and liberal use of glue on the fronts of the pictures.

I love my little VIP.  She is a lot of fun, even if I do sometimes feel like she needs a few more parents to fully address her needs.  That kid can suck up ALL of EVERYONE'S attention and still demand more, but she's a flaming ball of energy, and that's just how flaming balls of energy operate.  Love you, Little X!