Mississippi hot-dog

I've been rather absent here lately. Sorry about that. The thing is though, I can't really promise to be less so for the time being. I've honestly been trying, but my blogging brain has mostly vanished. I will for sure be back on the Blog Wagon come November. NaBloPoMo and I have a score to settle after all.

Today amazingly, (has it really become amazing for me to have something to say?) I have a bit to share.

Last week Zizza started Cello lessons. She's been looking forward to it for months now and the day finally came. There's a little 1/8th size cello to whom she refers as "Little Fred" standing proudly in a safe corner of her bedroom.

Sometimes she'll relieve Little Fred of his case outside regular practicing hours and play on her own. During these times I fret, hover and admire. What if her impromptu solo sessions teach her bad habits? Then again, look how sweet and lovely she is enjoying her instrument.

I reconcile the two sides of my thoughts by standing by and as gently as possible suggesting things like "Scoot to the edge of your chair," "How tall can you sit?" "Are your fingers floppy fish?" "Remember to hug Little Fred with your knees" and so on. Looking over that list makes me think that perhaps I'm not as unobtrusive as I'd like to be, but I'm doing my best.

The pest part of Zizza's freestyle playing is her left arm. After only one lesson, all she'd done with that hand was place it in resting position. Siting idle though surely cannot do for an arm whose mate is engaged in music making, so the left arm flows and dances trough the air as the right steers the bow across the strings. Today, in her second lesson she learned finger placement for her left hand, so I suppose the days of interpretive left arm dancing are numbered.

Another thing happened today as well.

Last week with all the talk of music lessons Enzo let it be know that he would enjoy to play the piano. He talked about it for a few days before Zizza's lesson, he mentioned it on the way there, and he brought it up as we chatted before her lesson began. "But where," I asked, "am I going to find a Suzuki piano teacher?"

Turns out Zizza's teacher teaches Piano as well. Lucky me. Lucky Enzo.

Enz was rather ill during the past week. You can thank my lack of blogging moxie for your being spared post after post about vomit. He was too busy feeling sick to talk about piano lessons. By the time we showed up for the Cello lesson today, I'd almost entirely forgotten about his desire.

We went in, and sat down, Ziz and Little Fred were getting situated when Enz asked me, the teacher's name. I told him and bold as brass he called out to get her attention. When he had it he asked her "Can you teach me Piano?"

He had a snippet of a lesson once Zizza's was through. It included a fair amount of banging, but I'm hopeful.

I'm also in the market for an inexpensive decent sounding key board to fill the gap until I can locate and appropriate used piano on which to execute the Design Mom treatment.