Just Tuesday

There is a cold in the house. It is trying to ruin my best laid plans for staying healthy in January. We have big doings on the burner for January and can't afford to be sick. Still, there is a cold in the house, ignoring my restraining order, making me bust out the chicken soup, the early bed times, the extra fluids, the naps in the afternoons.

The good news is that this was the first day in weeks that we've been just home. We slept in a little, we did two weeks worth of laundry, we went the homemade route with the chicken soup. There was another section in math, the last of the thank-you notes to write, and we drove trains around the Lego city in our play room. There was Star Wars on the piano. I introduced Calvin to the Wii today with Wii Fit Plus, and we revisited our favorite British Doctor with a couple episodes of The Human Journey. We played a cooperative game of Set (and we might be getting the hang of it). There was art. A lot of art. And there was a lot of just plain enjoying each other.

Sonatina

The boy is going through a piano phase right now. We can be doing anything and he'll just drop it to go and practice for a few minutes. At other times he'll practice for a half hour or more in one sitting, then go back to it not even fifteen minutes later. He's practicing a piece for the recital in December along with a number of other skill pieces, and he seems to really enjoy them. Thankfully we do, too.

Dedication

Video of Jon's pieces from yesterday's faculty recital! It went very well, and we always have a great time watching him play. He played pieces by Chopin and Debussy, the Chopin having been suggested by my brother, so he dedicates this video performance to Curtis.

Mazurka in A minor - Frederic Chopin (a souvenir to Chopin's friend and student Emile Gaillard)

Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum (from Children's Corner) - Claude Debussy (dedicated to Debussy's daughter, Claude Emma)

This busy life

A day of pleasantly warm sunshine to break up days of chilly fall rain. Although I've always thought of September as being the month to usher in fall, this is the first in a long line of years that I remember it being quite so chilly and actually fall-like. This isn't really a bad thing, although since the new furnace doesn't go in until tomorrow there were a few rather chilly nights in the house last week when temperatures outside dipped below forty degrees. Brrr.

Today I was faced with the bare fact that a discussion of evolution must bring with it a discussion of mating. Years of conventional thinking causes a spark of indecency when this lesson comes to mind, and yet I see nothing unnatural in the progression towards that topic. For now, though, I am going with the time tested tradition of providing information on an as needed basis. Steve Jenkins, in his book Life on Earth: The Story of Evolution, says simply that "Many living things reproduce sexually. This means that there is a father and a mother and that each baby has a mixture of the qualities of the parents." For now this has answered our needs and sparked no further questions.

We re-watched BBC's Walking with Monsters, penciled in a timeline of life on earth, and read a few books on the subject, most notably the above noted. We also went to lunch with family, shopped for winter clothes, groceries, and craft items, went on a nature walk, practiced the piano, tried out some map scaling worksheets, took notice of the warm sunshine, and straightened the house for the sake of the people who are coming tomorrow to put in the new furnace. October is a lot closer than I keep thinking.

Spring piano recital

It feels like I haven't had much to say lately. Mostly it's because of utter exhaustion—our days have been very full, what with a birthday and all—so that at the end of the day my mind is fried and I'm not thinking in terms of journal entries or blog posts. I'm lucky if I can spell out our names and get the date right. And the thing about busy days is that they produce no less laundry and require no fewer meals.

Last week was the birthday, Saturday was the party, and Sunday was the spring/summer piano recital for Jon's students, Calvin included. The recital went well. It is a real joy to see how much Calvin has grown at the piano over the past year. Just a year ago he was picking out quarter notes with one finger. I've felt torn in the past about both the formal study of piano and the recitals, something I think I've mentioned before, but I hesitate only because I don't want piano (or any learning for that matter) to become so goal oriented that the enjoyment of the process or the ability to self fulfill gets lost. This has not been an issue in our experience thus far, though, and I am not going to look for trouble where none is to be found. Calvin really enjoys the challenge of the piano. He needs little encouragement to practice every day, and, following his regular pattern, does most of his practicing entirely on his own. And the results really are enjoyable for all of us, especially since the process is equally so.