“Do you love your sister?!” Sophie asked the other day, out of the blue.

“Um, yeah, of course I love Aunt Jenny,” I replied.

“Tell her!”

Hmmm. That might be tough. The only time in recent memory the phrase “I love you” was used in conversation with my younger sister, it was at the end of a phone call and I can’t recall which of us said it but I do remember that we both burst out laughing — because it was an accident. While we both end every conversation with our mom and our respective husbands with “I love you,” we don’t say it to each other.

Not for any particular reason. We just don’t. It’s not us.

But it is Sophie. She’s the Love Nazi.

“Say, `Hello beautiful mother,’” she says as she hands me the phone, after giving my mom instructions to greet me as ‘beautiful daughter.’”

It’s not like we’re not an affectionate family — it’s just that as a rule, Sophie is pretty much exploding with love. The rest of us are a bit more subdued. Exhibit A: the picture above, of Sophie and her best friend Sarah. Sarah looks pleased, if slightly panicked (it’s understandable, for a tiny person Sophie has a scary-tight grip) by this run-of-the-mill show of affection.

It’s cool. Who couldn’t use a love explosion once in a while? The other day, Sophie told me she loves me more than her birthday. That’s big. (I’m not sure she means it, but hey, I’ll take it.)

Don’t get me wrong — it’s not “The Love Boat” 24/7 around our house. Sophie can be just as pissy (sometimes more) as the rest of us. But a lot of the time, she reminds me of the title character in my favorite Christmas movie, “Elf.” (“I’m in love, I’m in love and I don’t care who knows it!”)

I can’t wait to dance at her wedding.

Sophie does have one habit I’d like her to break.

She waits til I’ve just drifted off to sleep, then she puts her face right up next to mine, and kisses me gently on the lips. In Disney movies this looks so pleasant, but trust me, when you open your eyes from the throes of a gentle slumber and there is another set of eyes looking right into yours (from a distance of a few centimeters) it scares the shit out of you.

Out of me, anyway.

A small price to pay for all that love.

Today I am 46.

When I mentioned last week on Facebook that I was having trouble with my list of 50 things to do before I’m 50 (with thanks for the inspiration to my friend Megan, who came up with the idea for 30 before 30, a much more rationale notion!), I was bombarded with suggestions:

Zipline, skydive, bungee jump, learn to surf, drive a race car, snorkel, learn to belly dance/pole dance.

Suddenly, my life was looking pretty fucking great, because the truth is that not only have I never done any of those things, I have never had any desire at all to do them. And I’m not starting now.

Im fact. just knowing that I don’t have to any of these things makes me giddy. You made my day, friends. But please, by all means, jump out of that plane. Let me know how it goes.

One friend had the lovely suggestion that I volunteer to build a House for Humanity, but after I smashed a glass door just trying to move a table in my own home yesterday, I think my public service will be avoiding such opportunities. But I do have some volunteering-related items on the list.

No, I will not be trying sushi or anything else unusual (including garbanzo bean chocolate cookie dip) but I did really like my dear friend Deborah’s suggestion: “Kill a man. And get away with it.”

Too bad I was already up to 50 items when she mentioned it.

I’m not going to share my entire list (even for me, there’s such a thing as TMI) but here are a few items on it:

1. Keep blogging, at least once a week.
2. Jog a 5K.
6. Seriously consider getting a tattoo, but ultimately decide not to.
7. Buy new bath towels.
9. Organize my jewelry.
11. Seriously consider going to a high school/college/grad school reunion.
13. Buy sharp knives.
14. Organize my iTunes.
16. Go to Paris with my mother.
17. Write down (in one place) all the (really good) family recipes I can find.
18. Go to Seoul.
19. Renew my passport.
20. Go to Montreal.
21. Go to Vancouver.
22. Figure out a way to keep from losing the lids on Tupperware.
23. Wear sunglasses on a regular basis.
24. Buy a belt (and wear it).
25. Go to Mexico City.
26. Pitch a piece to the NYT magazine “Lives” column.
27. Play bingo.
28. Get a signature fragrance.
29. See Paul McCartney live in concert.
30. Make matzoh from scratch.
32. For once, do my taxes before April 15.
33. Drive cross country.
35. Throw out every pen in the house that doesn’t work.
36. Find a regular volunteer gig at Annabelle’s school.
37. Get a parttime gig teaching journalism.
38. Find the oral history tapes I did with Grandpa before he died.
39. See more live music.
40. Make a plate wall in my house.
41. Stop dyeing my hair.
42. Consider joining a temple.
44. Go to Vegas with Ray, stay at the Cosmopolitan, see a show.
45. Find a marketable skill other than journalism. (Just in case.)
46. Get a standard poodle and name it Opal. Or Ruby.
47. Go to San Francisco.
49. See old friends more often.
50. Live in the moment.

I better get going now. Got to get busy.

“Oh man,” my friend sighed into his spare ribs. “How could it be that not everyone understands that Barack Obama is, like, the coolest, smartest, most incredible president we’ve ever had?”

“I know,” I said, helping myself to more beef and broccoli. “I know.”

We were at a rundown restaurant in central Phoenix, the kind of place we aging, erudite hipsters love to frequent — a place the food critic I work with discovered last month, a place where you’ll typically be dining alongside large Chinese families. The food is terrific, the decor is not. So, so cool. (You better get there before everyone else discovers it and it’s suddenly not cool at all.)

I realize that not everyone likes to eat at a restaurant that smells like dirty laundry, where an old red leather booth is split down the middle and if you don’t watch it will catch the skin of your thigh, but where there is a stewed pumpkin dish on the menu that will change your life. I realize that, but as I sit here writing, I can’t really think of anyone I know who wouldn’t want to try New Hong Kong on Indian School and 24th Street. (You’re welcome.)

And yet there is, of course, the chance that the place will go out of business next week.

I call it the “My So-Called Life” syndrome. Remember that show, from years ago, with Claire Danes? You loved it, right? All your friends loved it. And then the network cancelled it, because no one watched it.

That is my fear about this election. Even in blood red Maricopa County, home of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Governor Jan Brewer, I have managed to surround myself with people just like me. We text and email, post on Facebook, go to each other’s debate parties and out to lunch. We make fun of Romney’s smirk, roll our eyes at his family, wish he’d make more gaffes.

I watch the polls, I listen to the analysis, but still — how could Obama lose? Everyone I know is voting for him. (Or not saying otherwise.)

The other night, a dinner guest at my home (two, actually) popped my bubble, announcing intentions to vote for Romney. They were as horrified at my decision as I was at theirs. Hey, folks, that’s politics. It’s America. And it was a reminder of how easy it would be for the nation to turn the channel, to cancel the show.

Don’t forget to vote, friends. Don’t forget to vote.

Two nights ago, Sophie slept with us. Rather, with me. She leaves Ray alone, but not me. I’m her foot rest, her arm rest, her kicking post. At one point I was sleeping on my side — my back to her — and realized she was using my hip as a pillow.

Typically I’d roll her over, shake her awake, try sending her back to her bed — or at least the other side of my bed. But this time I didn’t say anything, just tried to go back to sleep despite the bowling ball resting on my butt.

I’ve had more sympathy for Sophie since our trip to Tucson last week. Mostly it was for fun — we visited friends, shopped, played games. But I did have one “grown up” appointment at the University of Arizona, where, it turns out, some important Down syndrome research is happening.

Who knew? I usually pride myself on knowing what’s going on in my backyard, but I didn’t realize that in the last few years, UA has become an important hub for DS research. Professor Jamie Edgin was kind enough to give me a tour — just a few rooms in the basement of a space science building, nothing special looking. But the conversation was pretty awesome.

I’ll boil it way down: Edgin, whose background is in psychology, is interested in the physical characteristics of Down syndrome that exacerbate cognitive deficiencies. I’m sure I’m botching that, but I think she’d agree that’s the basic idea. Right now she’s very interested in sleep. Turns out, people with Down syndrome have a double whammy that makes them prone to sleep apnea: a certain cranial structure along with low muscle tone.

Edgin’s research shows that sleep apnea in children with Down syndrome has an impact on cognitive abilities. (A pretty profound one.)

“Oh, I’m sure Sophie has sleep apnea,” I told her — thinking about how Sophie wanders each night from her bed to the couch to my bed, trying to get comfortable; how she snores and starts awake; how she prefers to sleep sitting up (see photo — taken after she fell asleep during the first presidential debate).

Edgin explained that one thing her research shows is that the subjects with sleep apnea have lower vocabularies, because we “consolidate” our memories at night. That makes sense, I told her, but Sophie seems to have a pretty good internal dictionary.

These kids also have problems with transitions, she said.

“DING DING DING! That’s Sophie!” I thought, cataloging the last dozen or so instances — which had taken place just that day.

Okay, I said, sign us up. And so the researchers will come to our house later this fall. (I better straighten up the bedrooms!)

There’s no guarantee any of it will make a difference — or that, if Sophie is diagnosed with sleep apnea, that she’ll wear the mask most of the middle-aged men I know are wearing. But it’s worth a try. And it’s fascinating.

I’ve long wondered if the physical differences in people with DS affect their mental abilities. When Sophie was a few months old, they put her in a Doc Band — one of those white football helmet-looking contraptions meant to round out a flat-backed head. Mostly typical kids wear them; the helmets were a huge and important find, considering before them, quack doctors were performing risky cranial surgery on babies to fix heads made flat by back sleep. (The unintended consequence of the fix for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.)

Sophie was weak as a baby — in need of heart surgery, unable to suck hard enough to eat without a tube — and her head quickly emerged as a candidate for a band. So we did it, and in reading the research I noticed that some were saying that without a Doc Band, there was a risk of developmental disabilities.

I asked the Doc Band folks if there was a chance Sophie could have improved cognitive abilities because her head would be “fixed” — I thought about the people I’d seen with Down syndrome, and in fact, they all seemed to have flat heads.

Maybe a Doc Band for every child with DS could improve cognitive function?

The woman fitting Sophie’s Doc Band just looked at me funny, and changed the subject. I dropped it, figuring it was just a silly notion, a too-hopeful idea on my part. Most likely, the whole thing really is cosmetic. (And for the record, that band didn’t do a damn thing to her head — maybe Down syndrome made the flatness a foregone conclusion, or maybe it was the fact that the thing rubbed a hot spot on my poor baby’s head, so she couldn’t wear it the required 23 hours a day.)

At that point, I was looking for — well, if not a cure, then at least some hope. Almost 10 years later, I’m cool with Sophie. She’s pretty damn smart, if you ask me. Yes, I’d love it if her IQ shot up a few points with a sleep mask, but I’m not holding my (own sleep-deprived) breath. I’ll be thrilled if she gets a little easier on the transition front. And if  not, I can live with that, too.

But on a meta-level, I’m delighted that Professor Edgin thinks the way she does — and that she’s only a two-hour drive away from me, walking the walk.

If you want more information on the University of Arizona Down syndrome Research Group, here it is.

I have a raging case of the HeyMoms.

It came on two weekends ago, and no matter how much rest I get, how well I eat (I’ve even taken my Centrum for Women horse pill of a multi-vitamin religiously each morning) I can’t shake them.

It started suddenly, in the car, on a Sunday afternoon.

“HeyMom!” Sophie called from the back seat.

“Yes, Sophie?”

“What are we doing tonight?”

“I’m not sure, sweetie.”

“HeyMom!”

“Yes, Sophie?”

“Can I sleep in your bed tonight?”

“No, sweetie, it’s a school night.”

“HeyMom!”

“Yes, Sophie?”

“Can Sarah spend the night?”

“No, not tonight, but definitely sometime soon.”

“HeyMom!”

“HeyMom!”

“HEYMOM!”

“HEYMOM!!!!!!”

(Annabelle): “Mom, Sophie’s trying to ask you something.”

“Oh, gee, I’m sorry girls. I must have turned the radio up too loud to hear you. Yes, Sophie?”

And so it goes. On and on — and on — with the questions. (And the refusal to accept most answers.) The questions begin most mornings before I’ve even opened my eyes (“HeyMom! You up?” “HeyMom! What are we doing tonight?”) and follow me to the bathroom  (“HeyMom! You have to go pee or poo?”) and end, often, as she dozes off on the couch at night, mid-sentence. (“HeyMom! Can I stay up a little la-….”)

The HeyMom thing has been going on as long as I can remember, and it’s never really bothered me — til that Sunday afternoon. I’m not sure what happened. The questions weren’t out of the ordinary. It’s just that suddenly, there were a lot more of them. Ray has recently reported a bad case of the HeyDads, so I know I’m not completely nuts. I thought it was the full moon, but that’s over and on it goes.

Sophie is amped. ADHD and un-medicatable (is that a word?) — the American Nightmare.  Most days I’m pretty happy Sophie’s mended heart prevents us from even considering drugs to calm her down, make her focus, but the HeyMoms have made me a little wistful.

All I need is a break, I thought to myself that Sunday. I’ll be better after I get a good night’s sleep/escape to Safeway alone/get back to work.

No go. From the first HeyMom that Monday morning, I was frazzled. And continue to be.

“HeyMom!”

“Yes, Sophie?”

“When are we going to Tucson?”

She’s been asking for weeks. Tomorrow we’re going away overnight — it’s her fall break, so we’ll drive to Tucson, just the two of us, to visit friends. Two full days of HeyMoms, yes. But I’m hopeful this will shake it, because it’ll also be two days of relaxing, of few plans and no agenda. Time to hang out, to say yes when she asks for chocolate ice cream. To give her my undivided attention.

I haven’t tried to explain to Sophie that I have the HeyMoms. I wouldn’t begin to know where to start. But she knows. She can’t stop herself, but inevitably, I notice, just before I’m about to truly lose it, this happens:

“HeyMom!”

“Yes, Sophie?”

“Mommy, I love you.”

“I love you, too, Sophes. I love you, too.”

“Is it okay if we tell her about the underwear?” one of the teachers muttered to the other toward the tail end of Sophie’s parent/teacher conference yesterday afternoon.

Underwear?

Instantly, I was on high alert. (Who wouldn’t be?)

It had been a pretty good conference, as far as these things go. I dread parent/teacher conferences. IEP meetings are an out-of-body experience that takes place on another planet, but the twice-a-year conference — everyone goes to those. I walk down the hall to Sophie’s teacher’s room and glimpse conferences through the windows of other classrooms and know very few will be as eventful as Sophie’s.

After several years, I still get wistful when her classmates’ parents post on Facebook about their fabulous parent/teacher conferences. If only I could sum up what happens in one of these sessions in a two-sentence status update — let alone share news about straight As. Or any As.

In fact, the school is trying out a new report card format this year, and, as it turns out, the highest and lowest kids fall off the map entirely, because of the way performance is measured. And so Sophie’s report card is half-empty.

But her teachers are definitely of the glass half-full mindset. I brought up all of my concerns — that math is still too hard for Sophie (turns out some days the wrong homework has wound up in her backpack, they explained she’s actually working on very simple problems); that she’s socially inappropriate (oh no, they assured me, the other kids clamor to play with Sophie — she’s not stalking anyone); that she’s all over the place, all the time (that, they admitted, is true — but seemed truly unfazed).

I sat there feeling relieved, sort of. Also feeling simultaneously like I worry too much and that I don’t have the slightest idea what I should really be worrying about.

I didn’t know what else to say.

I told them to be sure to be as firm as they feel is necessary — that, actually, Sophie welcomes it and responds to it, though it might be a bit painful for all parties involved — and we were all gathering our papers, getting ready to leave, when the underwear came up.

Yesterday morning, apparently, Sophie confided in the special ed teacher that she wasn’t wearing underwear. Which wouldn’t have been such a big deal, except she was wearing a somewhat loose pair of shorts. (And, for the record, a sports bra she definitely didn’t need. Also for the record: I do monitor what she wears to school, but more and more she’s dressing herself — a good thing, right? I thought so til yesterday.)

So off to the nurse she went, to borrow a pair of pants. And a pair of underwear.

We agreed that Sophie had most likely done it all by design — part of her goal, most days, is to make it to the nurse’s office.  She might read at a second grade level and struggle with her multiplication tables, but that kid can problem solve like nobody’s business.

On my way out the door, I grabbed a photo of Sophie’s line drawing, displayed on the wall alongside her classmates’. I didn’t have to ask which was hers. It stuck out, just like Sophie always does.

And that’s okay — as long as she comes to school fully clothed.

I am considering doing something very scary on Thursday afternoon.

I am considering walking into Sophie’s parent/teacher conference and asking her teacher to let my kid ditch math, permanently.

Ditch? Did I mean to use such a strong word? Well, yeah. Sort of.

As I’ve written before, Sophie can’t do the math. She can’t do the math the “low group” in her fourth grade class is doing. She can’t even do the math below what the low group is doing. This morning her long-time physical therapist read over some of the special ed teacher’s weekly progress notes about multiplication and word problems and asked, “Is Sophie able to do any of this?”

No, I admitted. She’s not.

Dorcas has been Sophie’s physical therapist since she was 3 months old. She almost never offers her unsolicited opinion. But when she does, it’s always solid. Last month I admitted to her that I never did get Sophie’s AIMS test (Arizona’s standardized test) results in the mail.

“Do you really want to see the results?” she asked.

Well, no. I admitted. I guess not. Good point.

(Some background: You need to know that I can’t think of anyone who pushes Sophie harder, who has higher expectations for my kid, and who’s prouder of her. The first nine months Dorcas worked with Sophie, the baby sobbed through every session. “Want to quit yet?” I’d ask Dorcas when she emerged at the end of an hour. “No,” she’d say serenely, wheeling her suitcase of therapy toys out the door. And one day, Sophie stopped crying; now she cries when Dorcas cancels. Dorcas taught Sophie to walk. And a lot more.)

Now I stood and watched Dorcas try to bite her tongue. Finally she burst out: “You know, if she was my kid, I’d tell them to show her how to use a calculator on the iPad and teach her about money. Why bother with the rest?”

To be honest, I’d been thinking the same thing for a while. The last time I wrote about Sophie and math, I got an amazing gift, in the form of a comment from my friend Elaine, who is so wise that when she leaves comments on my blog, people swoon. (Me included.) Here’s what she wrote:

Oh, Amy. As someone who likes math, here’s what I think: math is useful the way poetry is useful. That is to say, there are people who couldn’t live without it. And there are plenty who don’t ever need it at all. Math is worth studying for the same reasons poetry is worth studying: it’s beautiful and it’s empowering. You may never have seen the beauty, so you’re going to have to trust me on this one, math is an elegant system of logic, it’s this gorgeous architecture of theorems, it’s actually related to the swirls in a pineapple and the sounds in a musical scale…. But it you miss all that? No biggie. As long as Sophie knows that she is getting the right change, and that a $20 off sale is not the same as a 20% off sale, well, then, she’s probably okay. It sounds like you probably missed out on some of the beauty and empowerment of math (so many people do), and you turned out more than fine.

So yeah, I’d been thinking about it for a while, about telling the school to ditch math. But it’s scary. It would be the biggest step I’ve taken so far — even bigger than demanding an aide, bigger than agreeing each year to more time in the “resource room” — toward admitting Sophie can’t keep up. Won’t ever keep up. Is falling behind.

“If I ask for this, can’t they just tell me she doesn’t belong there?” I asked.

“No,” Dorcas said. “They are supposed to give her work she can do.”

Okay. So maybe I’ll bring it up Thursday.

Trouble is, I have a bad feeling that math will turn out being the easiest problem to solve. Even during a year that, by all accounts, is going very, very well.

I quit eating candy corn last week.  This week, I’m going cold turkey on Honey Boo Boo.

I have a feeling it’s going to be tougher to give up my new favorite reality show. And that’s saying a lot, because I really love candy corn. But against all odds, TLC’s show about a (very) small town Georgia family’s antics has gotten under my skin, and I’ve decided to stop fighting it. There may not be any nutritional value in a bag of Autumn Mix (those aren’t real pumpkins, folks) but I’ve come to believe there’s redeeming value in TV’s most cringeworthy show, and I’m not afraid to say it.

I love Honey Boo Boo. Here’s why.

First, if you haven’t actually watched the show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, do us both a favor and move along. You have to suffer through at least one full epsiode to get it — or at least argue about it. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them all, or at least hunks of each, and I’ve got most of them DVR’d, so come on over.

If you watch reality TV all, you know there’s no rhyme or reason as to which shows you like. I love Cake Boss — but DC Cupcakes drives me nuts. I can’t watch the little people shows, but I’m obsessed with those conjoined twins. I am afraid to watch any of the housewives — terrified of immediate addiction — and terrifed of that show where all the women leave town for entirely different reasons.

My all-time favorite is Project Runway, but I turned off Craft Wars after the first 10 minutes. Hey, it’s a matter of taste. Plus, Tim Gunn versus Tori Spelling? No contest.

I had no intention of watching  Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. I am not a fan of Toddlers & Tiaras (although I do love Dance Moms) and didn’t know anything about this kid or her family when I happened to walk by the TV one night just as one of the kids stopped on Channel 42 on the cable box.

We were all horrified. Disgusted, freaked out. Shrieking at the TV. These people are gross — they fart and burp and rub their dirty feet on each other. And I can’t stop watching. “It’s a train wreck!” everyone says. “You just can’t look away!”

But it’s more than that.  This is a family. There’s a lot of dysfunction in this country (have you sat through an entire episode of Hoarders?) and these people certainly have their fair share. There is no debating the poor nutritional choices “Mama” makes for herself and her kids; and as much as I like a good thrifting experience, the epsiode where they visit the dump (which they call the department store) and one of the daughters gets wrapped in a dirty mattress was one of the sickest things I’ve ever seen. And one can only hope that “Sugar Bear” takes some of that money from TLC and gets to a dentist, stat.

But this is a family. “You can’t deny she loves her kids,” a dear friend (who shall remain nameless — you’re welcome, dear friend) said the other day, explaining why she, too, can’t stop watching. Yes, it was a little excessive when 4-year-old Alana (a.k.a. Honey Boo Boo) and her sisters toilet papered the entire house using the giant supply Mama’s amassed by extreme couponing, but it was sweet, too, particularly when the parents got home from an anniversary date and instead of getting mad, cracked up. Then everyone cleaned up the mess together. You don’t get more wholesome than that. And a lot of families could take a lesson from it.

I have to admit that Honey Boo Boo’s family reminds me just a little bit of my own. No, we don’t have contests in which we sniff each other’s breath, and we don’t throw our spaghetti against the wall then eat it (not on national TV, anyway) but we have been known to point out one another’s bodily eruptions and one Christmas someone in our family did make a dessert out of an angel food cake and red Jell-O that would have fit right in on Mama’s dining room table (if she had one). And the kids have had some Slip ‘n Slide adventures in the back yard that were straight ouf of rural Georgia. Let he who is without gas cast the first stone, I say.

Frankly, we could all use a little more Honey Boo Boo, because best of all, the members of that family can laugh at themselves. Now, they may not be laughing after watching how some of that footage was edited (I really doubt that woman actually farted during the taping of the intro to the show) but I hope they get the money they ask for and chuckle all the way to the bank.

So the other day when Sophie asked me to curl her hair, then admitted it was because she figured if she looked glamorous, they might ask her to be on Honey Boo Boo, I was horrified at first. And then I just laughed.

I’ll be sorry to see the season end on Wednesday. But I will not be whipping up a batch of  go go juice for the occasion.

God only gives you what you can handle.

The line popped in my head as I pulled away from the school this morning, and I haven’t been able to get it out all day.

OK, so first of all, as a committed agnostic, I’ve got some issues with the whole concept, right off the bat. But beyond that, if there is in fact a God, he has definitely got me out of my element when it comes to Sophie and math.

Sophie and just about everything else? I’m good with that. Not perfect, by any means, but I can get on the map. No way with math. You’d think that because her math is remedial (which is a nice way of saying she’s in the “low group”) I’d have no trouble doing her homework with her. I certainly thought that would be the case — til I tried it.

Take this morning. The math teacher had blown up the work on the Xerox machine to make it easier to read and circled just a few problems to make it managable, and still, Sophie and I stared at each other across the breakfast table, totally stumped.

“Do you understand this at all?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

We both looked back down at the paper. It was about “arrays” and included two identical problems — 7 X 4 — that you were supposed to solve and and from those, extrapolate the answer to 7 X 8. I tried to explain the most basic part of the problem.

“What’s 4 plus 4?” I asked.

Sophie looked at her fingers for a moment, and looked a little panicked. “Eight!” she said, obviously surprising herself.

Oh fuck, I thought. I looked at the rest of the page — it was all multiplication and division problems. I realized that not only do I not understand newfangled things like “arrays” and “fact families,” I can’t begin to figure out how to teach someone how to multiply and divide — without Schoolhouse Rock playing in the background. 

I did the only thing I could think to do. I pulled up the calculator on my iPhone and slid it across the table.

We plugged in the numbers together and she wrote the answers on the sheet. The higher concepts were forgotten, not to mention any sort of practice, but at least she was working with numbers, I told myself.

That was only half the worksheet. The rest was about word problems and rounding and identifying the 10 million spot in a number. Here’s the thing. Not only do I have no idea how to show Sophie how to do any of this, I have no idea if it matters. I admit that I stopped paying attention in math when I was about her age and aside from the fact that I’m pretty crappy at figuring out the tip on lunch, it hasn’t much impacted my life.

But will it impact Sophie’s? When will it be time to totally abandon math? Years ago, a teacher warned me not to discount math, said it’s vital to brain development. OK, I’ll bite. And I’m not saying Sophie’s brain is any less worthy than anyone else’s but would someone please tell me the truth: How much does math matter in this particular, um, circumstance?

In the meeting we had with Sophie’s team last week, someone mentioned that she really doesn’t enjoy music class much. So they’ve been letting her skip it. “Sometimes you have to pick your battles,” the principal said.

I totally agree. Music, shmusic. But what about when it comes to math? And if we let Sophie sit math out, where will she sit? Like literally, where will they put her during math class? Will she be on a path to the Special Ed room, to a self-contained environment where they send the kids who can’t perform?

So her brain won’t develop and the rest of her will rot. Great, I thought, watching her struggle with the calculator. When she finally finished, I smiled and said, “Good job!”

She smiled back and I thought for the millionth time about what it would feel like to actually believe it when someone told me, “Good job!” I always figure people are just being nice.

I was digging in her folder for the reading homework when Sophie grabbed the pen off the table and picked up her math worksheet again.

“How you spell hard, Mom?” she asked, as she scrawled a note on the top of the paper.

I told her — slowly, a couple times, per her request — then read the message she’d written to her teacher: My maths hard. Without comment, I carefully put the sheet in her math folder.

When we got to school, Sophie’s teacher was coming in from crosswalk duty.

“We had a hard time with the math homework today,” I told her. She promised to take a look. I had an email before lunch. Really, I know I keep saying this teacher is amazing — and she is. Here’s what she wrote:

Thank you for letting me know that last night’s homework was a challenge. We had a quick chat about math and have come up with a plan.

Sophie’s homework will match her IEP goal of mastering basic multiplication facts with the factors zero to five.

In math class, [her aide] will help Sophie use a multiplication chart to solve multiplication and division problems with factors larger than 5. As the group learns the process of multiplying larger numbers in the coming weeks, Sophie will continue to use the chart with [the aide's] support and if needed we’ll modify the problems.

When she meets with [the special ed teacher]  for math they will continue to work on her goal with factors zero to five. She will also use the multiplication chart in resource as needed when multiplying larger numbers.

How does this sound?

It sounds really fucking awesome, I told her. (I left “fucking” out.)

Maybe God (or who/whatever) didn’t give me what I can handle, but at least he/she/it gave Sophie this teacher.

I wish fourth grade could last forever.

Someone pinch me.

I had a feeling it would be a good meeting after the principal sent that email with the exciting news that he and Sophie share a birthday — but still, I held my breath as I walked into the school yesterday afternoon for a gathering of Team Sophie. And when we all went around the table and introduced ourselves, my throat closed up like it always does when it was my turn.

“Amy Silverman, Mom,” I said, hoping no one noticed my voice crack. I’ve sat around this conference room table with most of these women for years now, but this time there was a big absence: The Old Principal.

The Old Principal retired last year, and I have to admit that the celebration was pretty universal — every parent I know had had it with her. She wasn’t the worst principal ever, I’m sure, but probably one of the fakest. Fake as in she always had a super sunny greeting, a giant smile, a too-quick explanation, and a lot of gingham decorations all over the school office. When she came from another school in the district a few years ago she brought along a cabal of smiley women who are all too good with the die-cut machine to earn my trust.

And here’s the main thing: Sophie didn’t like her. I shouldn’t say that. It’s not like Sophie actively hated this woman, more that she had no use for her. And that’s not typical with Sophie. As I’ve said before, she can take one whiff and tell if you’re the real thing.

The New Principal? Definitely the real thing. I’d heard all about him before we met — and the fact that he’d sat down and read Sophie’s IEP for no other reason than because she’s a kid at his school? I was in love before first sight. Every time The Old Principal and I would have an “issue” over the years (and we had our share — like the time she told me Sophie needed to act like a typical kid if she wanted to attend this public school, or the instance where Sophie was bullied in the lunch room after I’d plead forever for extra help for her there) she’d be quick to remind me all about her background in special ed.

Yeah. And I’m sure some of her best friends are gay/black/developmentally disabled. Whatever. She sucked. But we smiled hard (literally) at each other til she left.

Yesterday’s meeting wasn’t one of those DEFCON situations I’ve been in before. It was the meeting we ask for in the IEP each year, since Sophie’s IEP comes around in the spring and it seems like a good idea to meet after a month of a new grade at school to see how things are going.

Things are going well. Really well, by all accounts. But still, I walked into that room extremely concerned about Sophie’s handwriting — and the fact that for years now, I’ve asked for someone to implement a system where she uses the same device for written expression, across the board. (As opposed to hand writing in one class, a laptop in another and the iPad in still another.) I always ask, and everyone always mumbles. The Old Principal would look at her Blackberry and look bored and I’d worry that I was pushing too hard. And nothing would change. By this summer, Sophie’s physical therapist was horrified that nothing was in place; her nanny (the one with the special ed teaching degree) was, too. I was feeling extra guilty — and lost.

This time, I walked in and there was literally a solution on the table — an iPad holder and a tiny wireless keyboard to go with it. All I needed to do was order it, send our iPad to school every day (something I’ve offered for two years) and voila — Sophie will be able to write. (Well, she will have the tools, anyway.)

To be fair, the occupational therapist was probably planning on that anyhow, but it became clear during yesterday’s meeting that the principal had approached each team member the previous day to go over concerns and be sure everyone was ready for this meeting. When I mentioned that I was looking for a home occupational therapist, he excused himself and came back with a recommendation. He’s on top of it.

And more than that, the guy is genuine. I can’t really describe it;  you’ll just have to take my word for it. (Sophie’s word, too, she’s smitten.) The principal admitted after the meeting that he’s fallen hard for Sophie. “She’s melted my heart,” he said, adding that he has a purple shirt he looks forward to wearing because he knows the reaction he’ll get.

Sweet nothings aside, this is a man who actually told me he wants to create an environment for my kid — my kid with Down syndrome – where she’ll be able to fully use and develop her own voice.

See? Public education isn’t dead — just bleeding by the side of the road. Coincidentally, yesterday I heard a report on NPR that Arizona has cut K-12 more than any other state in the nation in the last five years. Nice. Why someone like this guy (he said he’s a recent transplant to the state) wants to take something like that on is beyond me — but I’m incredibly grateful he does. And grateful for Sophie’s wonderful classroom teacher, her aide, her special education teacher, and the entire village she’s surrounded with at this school. (I do wonder how the principal will get along with the school psychologist who told me two years ago that Sophie has the cognitive abilities of a 3-year-old. Should be interesting. I was on good behavior and didn’t mention that yesterday.)

I’ve never had the luxury of liking a principal; it might take a while to get used to. We walked to the school lobby after the meeting and stood chatting for a while. He motioned to the blank walls and talked about his plans to cover them with big, beautiful photos of kids. And huge word murals with favorite lines from books.

I looked around and realized the gingham is all gone and finally, I felt like I could breath.