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Mrs. Laura Bush and Mrs. Michelle Obama sit in the private residence of the White House Monday, Nov. 10, 2008, after the President-elect and Mrs. Obama arrived for a visit. [White House photo by Joyce N. Boghosian]
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Both Laura Bush and Michelle Obama have two daughters, and the issues surrounding raising them in the public spotlight was expected to be a likely topic of discussion.
The Bush twins, Jenna and Barbara, were 18 when Bush arrived at the White House in 2000.
Malia Obama is 10 and her sister, Sasha, is seven, and they'll be the youngest children to live there since nine-year-old Amy Carter moved in after Jimmy Carter's 1976 election victory.
The Obama girls weren't at the White House with their parents Monday.
They were in school in Chicago, and Michelle Obama is looking at various schools in Washington, D.C., for her girls.
The Obamas flew back to Chicago immediately following the visit.
There was every reason to assume a meeting between Bush and the president-elect might be uncomfortable -- Obama has spent much of the last two years, after all, assailing just about every facet of Bush's presidency.
Bush, for his part, is said to have remarked privately that Hillary Clinton would have been a better presidential nominee for the Democratic party due to her wealth of political experience.
Obama is also said to be compiling a list of Bush policies he will likely reverse immediately upon taking office, although that's not unusual when a new president from an opposing party takes over the White House.
Among the measures Obama is looking at overturning is a proposal that cuts funding to women's groups that counsel abortion in developing countries and reversing a ban on stem-cell research funding.
Obama's advisers are also quietly working on a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his campaign promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.
The president-elect has made it clear there is only one president for now, and that's Bush.
Obama, the first African American elected as U.S. president, will be inaugurated on Jan. 20.