{Candor}

A rare, quiet moment crept its way into my evening. Inspired by the Olympic athletes who proved again and again the potential of humans, I determined that I, too, would choose that moment to somehow better myself.

I escaped to the living room, dug through the basket of books and papers next to the piano, and found some sheet music that I had worked on years ago under the tutelage of my mother. Yes, a little music to soothe the soul, strengthen the mind and exercise the fingers. Just the thing!

I carefully and slowly worked my way through Bach's Air, pleased with the way certain strains came back to my fingers almost automatically. I relaxed and found peace.

And then Miss Kate entered the room. She was not as inspired. "Ahhh!" she shrieked. "It's scary when you play the piano! It's not normal!"

The lamb then covered her ears.

My chord came to a screeching halt. And I instantly recalled why I seldom sit down to play in the first place.

{Day 25} :: I Think It's Working

Remember yesterday? The day that I joined my Little Miss Avery Kate at the piano? Well, she noticed.

And she liked it.


Guess what happened this afternoon at about 4:30? "Mom! I'm going to practice my piano! Can you sit down like you did?" My effort yesterday had felt so small. So seemingly insignificant. But to that child at that time, it was perfect. It was exactly what she needed.

I'm sure you can guess what I did at about 4:30 this afternoon. I sat. It was just as giggly as ever. Although I did notice that she avoided asking me to play the duet. I wonder why?

Read about the thirty-one day challenge over here.

{Day 24} :: At the Piano

This sitting exercise has revealed to me a number of things. One of them is my tendency to delegate. Now, delegation can be a very handy tool when multiple children exist in a home. It's great to be able to ask Bethie to help Avery with her reading lesson or to hand over Aidan's math questions to Drew. They enjoy helping each other and appreciate the grown-up responsibility.

But sometimes I delegate too much. And often when it comes to Miss Kate. Of course this is perhaps natural since she's the youngest and most needy. If I'm making dinner and she's screaming about trying to find her bike helmet, it makes perfect sense to ask big sister to help out.


Tonight as I tried (for the third time) to finish loading the dinner dishes, Miss Kate decided that she would like to practice the piano. She got three notes into her C scale and shouted, "Mom!!! Can you help me?" My first instinct was to look for Drew. But I stopped myself. The dishes could wait (again). It would be such a small sacrifice to sit beside my daughter on the piano bench.

We sat together, counting out her scale, remembering when to tuck her fingers (with me inwardly cringing and outwardly very rigid because she mostly forgot to tuck her fingers) and finally made it successfully through all eight notes. Three times. And now for the left hand!

When it was time to move on to her song, she was quite confident. She knew she had to stay on the chocolate notes and only once accidentally landed on a vanilla one.

And then we got to duet. It was rather giggly. Mostly because I cannot for the life of me play a song with six hundred flats. We tried again and again and again. I hit a multitude of wrong notes every single time. She giggled some more, hitting her chocolate notes with perfection.

It was an ideal way to not do the dishes. Again.

Read about the thirty-one day challenge over here.