[libxml++] get_children

[panoply att net]

If I have the following document:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<truck id="tip" targ="gamestart">
  <boat id="menuMatrix">
  </boat>
  <state id="start">
  </state>
</truck>

...and through the document provided by the domparser, I have obtained the root element, then should'nt it be true that a "get_children()" call on that root element would return 2, since the root (e.g. "truck") element has only two sub-elements?  Am I missing something here?  I always get a number several higher than what the document presents for child-elements of the root node.

Thanks,

-Brent