My little pianist

Reagan has finally clicked a bit with piano. She got a little bit of tough love with her teacher and she has responded well. She's wanting to please her more and more, which means she is willing to practice for me. Yea. The super cool thing - she started playing with two hands tonight. I flipped out when she did it. It didn't even phase her at all. That was always hard for me - I'm so glad it's not for her.

I'm so proud of her and how she's learning to dig into something and want to do it. I love watching her grow up so much.

Mush.

Rockin' the piano

Reagan is really starting to take off with her piano. Not only that, she really likes to go and loves her teacher. She doesn't practice yet much - but she only needs to see it once before she has it. Sometimes she doesn't even need to see it. It's really cool to watch her.

I  hope she loves music in her life!

Reagan piano

Reagan had another piano lesson tonight. Jim took her and said she had done really well. They started on some note reading a bit. She paid attention and did what was asked of her. I think she is really starting to enjoy it some. She's definitely getting used to it.

I hope she sticks with this for a while and really starts to be able to play.

Piano lessons

Reagan had her best lesson yet at this point. She walked in and didn't twitch, fidget or play the whole lesson. She bowed immediately and then got right up on the piano.

She had learned how to do the first five notes of the scale. Reagan and I had worked on her fingers. He was very impressed. She knew the notes, had her fingers right, did all the "stuff" and then even behaved well. Wow!

I'm glad she's doing well.

Piano

Reagan is doing much better than I expected. She is really responding well to her teacher. She listens and does what he asks. She still jumps around and is hyper, I think it is honestly just because she is excited. I was so impressed, I was ready to sign her up again despite the cats. :) I'm happy she found something else that she likes. Ahhhhhhh

Little Musician

Maddy may be a budding musician. Anytime I put the Suzuki music in the CD player, she starts to dance and wiggle. She will actually come over to me if we are at home to listen. Today in the car, I had the Mozart Einsteins DVD playing. When the piano part started, she started "playing" a pretend piano. It was adorable. I asked her "are you playing a piano" and she giggled.

Maddy wiggles

Maddy's got back. :) Ha! She waggles her rear-end when she dances. She is a dancing queen. Man. Anytime she hears a little music, she just starts kicking up her heels and waggling her booty. Then she starts waving her arms and twirling. It is so fun to watch her go.

Piano girl

Maddy is my little piano player (and stair climber). Every time we go to the basement, the first thing she does is crawl to the piano. She climbs up and starts tickling the ivories! I love it. She always reaches up and then turns to see if I'm looking. So cute. Eventually, she will start making noises and pointing as if she is asking to "get up".

I usually pick her up and she then will slam her hands onto the keys and just giggle. I love it.

Piano

Maddy loves the piano. She will now crawl over to the piano at a moments notice, pull up and start to play. Today, she grunted until we put her on the piano bench. She played there for a while and then started to crawl up on the keys. She actually pulled herself to standing on the keys (like Jerry Lee). She stood there and moved her feet around. Yes I got a video and a picture because it was way too cute.

Playing the piano

My mom came over tonight to play with the girls a bit. We hung out in the basement for a while. Of course, my mom went to the piano and started playing some suzuki music for the girls. At one point, she had Maddy and Reagan up on the bench with her playing the piano. Reagan was trying her best to show Mads how to play with her fingers. Maddy wanted to just smack the keys. They were both happy. My mom was thrilled. I took pictures.

Last violin lesson

Tonight was Reagan's last violin lesson for a while. I had made a decision last week that I was done battling her to practice with me. She's fully capable, but has no desire to do it. She does great in the lessons, but then that's it.

The nice thing was the Ms. Wan was a great teacher for her. She seemed to be just the right blend for her. When I spoke to her tonight, she was not surprised. She seemed perfectly fine with it and suggested we wait until she turns four. So we'll approach music again next year.

Ah well. At least she tried. The cool thing - she can play Twinkle Twinkle fairly well.

Drum set

I just went upstairs to check on Reagan. I kept hearing a "clicking" or "tapping" noise and couldn't figure out what it was. So I opened her door and apparently she had set up a drum set in her room. It was made of Dora books and lincoln log pieces. She had a book set up at every corner (probably 10 of them) and was just going to town. How do you get mad at that?

I just turned on the video camera and made record of it. After she was done playing her song, she gave me the salute! I love it.

When I asked her to go to bed, she told me she was too busy. Yes, yes she was. :)

Awesome creativity at almost 10pm. :)

Violin

Reagan is doing great with violin. Today we had to go to the teacher's home for her lesson. Reagan did great. She played and followed along with her teacher very well. I was so happy. I even got video of her playing along.

Hopefully next week she will keep doing better.

Reagan's finally getting it

She is finally getting the whole violin thing. After two months, she seems pretty adjusted. It's funny, the other teacher never clicked I guess. She learned stuff, but never liked going. This teacher she loves! She always wants to bring stuff and she always wants to impress.

Today I feel like we started to turn the corner a bit. She seemed a little more focused. We struggled with her less. She seemed to want to be there. She actually played and seemed generally interested. She never once uttered the negative words "I don't want to." That right there is a huge thing.

By the tine the lesson was over, she actually hugged her. It was so sweet. Ahhhh. Not only that, but when I realized she had lasted the entire time, I thought I was going to cry.

Violin

Tonight, she did great. We hadn't been to her lesson in two weeks and she could still play the first part of twinkle with the right bow technique. It was shocking. Her teacher actually said she was proud of her. Yea!

Driving Reagan to school today, I had the music CD on to listen to. After we dropped maddy off, I shut the DVD player. Almost immediately she complained. “Mommy I want to watch the DVD”. I said “I thought you wanted to listen to the music”. She said “oh yes mommy, I want to listen to music. But there’s music at the end of the movie. Madagascar (with a smile and bright eyes)! Ya know” and then started singing “Move it move it” song. Geez!

Violin lessons

So tonight Reagan amazed her teacher again. In four lessons, Reagan has gone from not playing one note on the violin to holding, playing multiple notes and sounding good. She can now play part of the twinkle variation well. We are now on to working on the arm work. Wow. The teacher seems to under react to most things. So when she said "she's doing really well", I took that to mean she really was. Either way, I'm proud of how well she's done and am impressed with her ability to absorb all of what she's learned so far.

Violin practice

She's doing great! Holy cow. I really stopped giving her a choice about practicing. I determined it's more an obey thing than anything else at this point and am just gently making her mind. Oh well. Hopefully it won't backfire on me one day.

None-the-less, she is playing. Tonight was her second practice and she already has the notes figured out. I just hope she can smooth it out before her next lesson on Monday.

I'm so proud of her.

Violin

Reagan is really doing well on the violin. Her lesson was to review the "A" and "E" strings playing Mississippi Hot Dog. She got that. Her teacher had her move on from there and taught her the first finger on the E string - the "F#". Yea!!! So this week she gets to practice the first part of Twinkle. I think I'm probably more excited than her.

Reagan violin lessons

Well tonight didn't go as well as it did last week. Last week, she had a private lesson and she did fantastic. This week, she had to share again and she did not do so well. She actually wanted to leave early. How nice. I sent her teacher a note requesting private lessons, but I haven't got a lot of confidence that she is willing.

Last Friday, she was able to get a private lesson last week because the other kids didn't show up. It was AWESOME. She paid attention, she dances, she laughed and she learned. When we left, she didn't stop talking about her teacher and how much she loved violin.

Tonight, she did the complete opposite.

It sux.