How Do You Babyproof A Violin?

Teaching a three-year-old to play the violin is hard. Teaching a three-year-old to play the violin while taking care of his soon-to-be-mobile little brother is even harder. Doing it all while sleep-deprived is nearly impossible. Like all little babies, Charlie seems to gravitate towards the things that are most dangerous and inappropriate for him to play with. This includes Joshua's 1/16th size violin and bow. Many practice sessions have only nearly missed calamity. Then at last week's lesson, a small disaster: Charlie finally got ahold of the violin. As is the routine of a mother, I was running late and juggling too many things with babe in arms. While I was busy taking the violin out of the case, trying to get Josh's wet shoes off, and keeping Charlie from grabbing the dog's face, Charlie saw his opportunity and triumphantly reached out and grabbed the little instrument right out of my hand. He threw it boldly onto the floor of the teacher's entryway. The chinrest popped off, but thankfully the wood didn't crack. Our wonderful teacher was able to fix everything good as new, and the lesson proceeded successfully, although Charlie kept making lunges towards the bow whenever he could.

I actually believe that Charlie is going to be the violinist of the family, long after Joshua has moved on to some other pursuit. In the spirit of the Suzuki mother-tongue approach, Charlie will have heard the songs and watched the techniques almost from day one of his life. Who knows what grows in these little acorns? As long as they find happiness, I'm sure it matters not.

I Should Quit Worrying So Much

After having a babysitter last night, Joshua tells me this morning, "Jane [not her real name] has a friend named Jeremiah." My mom mind starts racing with all kinds of images of teenagers gone wild, thinking the babysitter I trusted had invited her boyfriend over while I was gone. "Who's Jeremiah?" I ask suspiciously. Joshua replies, "He's a bullfrog. He's a good friend of hers."

Catching Up

In a typical pattern of early autumn creativity coinciding with the start of the academic year followed by the stagnant slump of daylight savings time, I abandoned my blog for a bit as my brain worked to adjust to the change of rhythm. October proved to be a very busy month for the symphony, and my evenings were booked solid with music-making and baby-raising and all sorts of non-bloggable nonsense. Joshua stopped taking naps during the day after a week-long battle of the wills in which I regret to say he trounced the parental team. By the way, the parental team has mainly consisted of myself for a good eighteen of the twenty four hours a day, the other six hours being when the young ones (young ones being my two sons and my husband) are sleeping anyways (sleeping meaning two hour stretches of lying down in between cries for favorite parental team member [myself] to assist in some fashion or other) because said husband is attempting to get tenured status at the university while also throwing down brilliant tenor sax solos nightly at various clubs withing a two hour drive of our home.

So, without further ado or excuses, here are pictures of the children on Halloween:


At left, brave young Joshua in his Gladiator suit, or as he likes to call himself, "Dragonslayer Dave".

At right, Mr. Charlie, our baby dragon who's just happy to be outside eating leaves.

I'm just happy to get the pictures up before Thanksgiving.

Constructing Phrases

I'm playing a gig tomorrow with the orchestra in which we have been asked to dress up as construction workers. The Maestro will be using a hammer to conduct (actually pound out) the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Busloads of sixth-graders will descend upon the performance hall to hear me play variations on "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" while I'm wearing my son's plastic yellow hard-hat. Sometimes it's hard to believe I get paid for this.

A Rare Perfect Day

Sundays. Generally, I hate them. The final day of the weekend always gets eaten up by chores to get ready for the work week, shopping trips for household necessities, and preschooler interventions after candy-intensive fun binges. Add to this the aimless mornings sipping tea in our pajamas while we watch the kids tear the house apart, and there you have it. The week is over.

Today, we had a Plan. Recognizing that our older son is desperately in need of a return to the unrealistic expectations of attentiveness he enjoyed prior to the arrival of young Charlie, we arranged a special preschooler-only outing for him. Leaving the baby in the capable and indulgent hands of the grandparents, we whisked Joshua away to the big city for a day out on the town. (The Town being Denver, home of the Broncos and birthplace of White-People Jazz.) If you don't know Joshua very well, I should perhaps explain that he has rather cultured tastes for a three-year-old. One of his favorite DVDs is a performance of Stravinsky's Firebird ballet. He likes listening to classical music, and can sing all the instrumental themes of Peter and the Wolf. I suppose having two parents involved in the arts has shaped his tastes somewhat. Don't get me wrong, he still thinks poop is really funny, but he does have a flair for all things dramatic.

So we took him to see the hit Broadway musical, "The Lion King". Before it started, he seemed a little nervous because he thought there would be real lions on stage. Once it started, though, he was totally engaged the whole time. He's never seen the Disney animated movie, so the story was new to him. He sat quietly the whole time, applauded enthusiastically, and told us afterwards that he liked "EVERYTHING"! He also enjoyed walking around downtown briefly, seeing all the skyscrapers. We had a nice sushi dinner, and returned to a happy baby, an easy bedtime, and now a bit of free time. I suppose I'll have to do some laundry now, but at least the week has been saved.

Another Halloween Idea Exchange

Joshua: Are we going to decorate our house with cobwebs?

Me: Maybe. We have a lot of cobwebs on the *inside* of our house, though. Isn't that spooky enough?

Joshua: Are we going to decorate our house with poop?

Me: No, Halloween isn't really about poop.

Joshua: Yeah... Halloween is about BUGS!

We Have an Understanding

Joshua (wearing a plastic red fireman hat): Let's get in the firetruck and go warn people not to play with fire.

Me (wearing a plastic yellow construction helmet because I get to be "the captain"): Just a minute. I have to fix my hair. I can't fight fires with bad hair.

Joshua: Yeah, mom, I know.