Big Girl

In the 10 days after Big Girl lost the first front tooth, she lost 2 more teeth: the other front tooth and the other bottom one that was loose (not the one in the middle). And the Saturday after that, she got glasses! I hardly recognize this kid. She's transforming into a "big kid" right before my eyes. The next thing I know, she'll be interested in boys and asking for the car keys... I'm so not ready for that.

Happy Birthday, Little Girl!

My baby is 5 today. I can't believe it!

She's a wonderful little girl.

Big Girl's Tooth

So far it's our first day off from school for Spring Break, and things are happening! Big Girl lost her second baby tooth today. She was eating an ice cream cone at Chick-fil-a, and it just fell out in her ice cream. She didn't even realize it had happened. She just thought there was something hard in her ice cream. There was- it was her tooth!

On April 21st, 2009, she lost her first tooth in her sleep. She must have swallowed it, because we never found it. She remembers it being April 21st. I trust her memory on such things. She's so good with details like that.

The tooth next to the gap, looking quite crooked in this picture, is also pretty loose. It's looser than the one in the middle on the bottom. Yes, she has a middle tooth. The permanent teeth are already in, and that baby tooth's partner is the one she lost April 21st. That baby tooth that's left has migrated to the middle, and is hanging on much more strongly than I'd like. We'll see what the dentist says on April 13th. The tooth immediately to the left of the permanent teeth on bottom is also very loose. Hopefully it will fall out nicely like the one she lost today.

Big Girl has a song in her head from Rock Band 2, "Psycho Killer." It's weird to hear her walking around the house singing it. Of course she's put the song in my head too. What a strange song...

Song in My Head

There's just nothing in this world that will put a weird song in your head like playing Rock Band 2... There are so many songs in the game I would never listen to in a million years that I not only listen to, but SING, just playing the game.

Tonight I played drums on songs I didn't even know and didn't fail! This is an accomplishment for me, as I am horrible at playing drums. I can make my fingers work independently of each other when I play the piano, but I just can't make my limbs work independently to play drums (real drums, not Rock Band 2 drums) to save my life. My husband has taught himself to do play drums in the last 5 years, and is quite good, and I find that completely amazing. His ability to do 4 different things with his 4 limbs blows my mind.

Today, right now, I have "In Bloom," by Nirvana, in my head. It's my husband's favorite Nirvana song. Just now I had to sing it to him to find out what song it was. Even though we played Rock Band 2 tonight, we didn't play this song. I don't know why this song is rolling around in my brain. Weird.

Peeve alert! I just hate it when I get a snippet of a song in my head, and I don't know it well enough to even sing it to myself. I can only hum a little part of it... So annoying!!

Rant over. It's been way too long sing I wrote a post related to the actual point of this blog. Sorry about that. I can't say that I will get my act together, since I know I probably won't. It's Spring Break now, so my life is a little less complicated for a week.

Who am I kidding? In this 5 days I don't have to go to work, I already have plans for 4 out of 5 of those days, including shopping with a friend, a doctor's appointment for Big Girl, meeting with another special ed mom, and hosting Little Girl's birthday party... Even though it's unscheduled, I'll spend the other day "off" sewing at my mother's sewing machine. Time off? Not exactly. Oh, and I also need to do laundry at some point! Ha! I'm going to need a vacation from my vacation!

March, ALREADY?!?

Oh my, 2010 is rip-roaring away... It's the third month, and I''m just now getting used to writing 2010 on my attendance slips at school. Sheesh!

March in the world of middle school choir means that UIL competition is very close at hand. In the years since I was in school, our district has started a Pre-UIL contest so all the groups get a dry run going through the process, and for us, that's happening next Monday. Here it is Thursday, and our first big time contest is MONDAY! We got to go through everything today with our accompanist for the first time. The two accompanied pieces will go just fine. The a capella number will be a challenge. With only 17 singers, the likelihood of holding the pitch together is questionable. Oh well... I can't be married to the idea of scores. This is a valuable experience, and as long as my students do their best, I'll be pleased, and I'll lavish them all with praise.

On a personal level, I have school stuff coming up, keeping me away from my family, on Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday. Then the next week is Spring Break. PRAISE GOD for Spring Break!! It couldn't be coming at a better time! A whole week home with my kids! And on Tuesday of Spring Break, my baby turns FIVE YEARS OLD! That seems absolutely CRAZY!

Little Girl will be 5. She's already been registered for Kindergarten. She's reading little books with one-syllable words quite well. She's counting to 20 and beyond. She's so very ready for Kindergarten. Her teacher told me a story about Little Girl's recent social life. A little girl in another class, "Brittany", and she had been buddies since the very beginning of the school year until a few weeks ago, when "Brittany" told Little Girl she didn't want to be friends anymore. Little Girl was very upset, and it took a few days of recess before she finally went looking for someone else to play with. Then a couple of days ago, "Brittany" tried to play with Little Girl again. When Little Girl is upset, she does this thing where she puts her chin to her chest and just puts her head down. It looks so very pitiful. Anyway, that's what she did when "Brittany" wanted to play with her. Obviously her little heart was still hurt over the whole thing. Her teacher encouraged her to forgive and play with "Brittany" again, and after a little while that's what happened. It's so sad to hear of my baby being hurt by another little child. At the same time, I want her to learn the hard lessons of forgiveness too.

Big Girl is doing quite well these days. She's a snaggletooth with 4 loose teeth right now. The two front ones are all crooked, and I think other kids with teeth like that play with them more to speed up the process, but not Big Girl. If there's pain involved, she'll go out of her way to keep it from hurting. Even if that means no teeth pulling at all. When she lost her first one, she lost it in her sleep and swallowed it. The Tooth Fairy was gypped! At school, she's been interviewing 2nd grade teachers whenever she meets one. She'll ask them if they have a quiet class. Never mind that the kids in those classes now won't be the ones there when she's a 2nd grader! Socially Big Girl is still doing well. She has come to me talking about her best little friend at school, and that she's noticed that the other girl is constantly telling her what to do, and that she doesn't want to be bossed around all the time. This is a big deal in her social awakening. She's also learning to forgive her friend. We had a talk the other day about forgive our friends as many times as they mess up and to not count. I mentioned the old "seventy times seven" and so then she started talking about only giving 490 chances... my literal-minded baby! I hope she can learn that lesson without too much heartache.

When it comes to this stuff, I think I'm more protective of Big Girl than Little Girl. Little Girl is deep, and sensitive, but she's also tough. Big Girl will remember getting hurt in a different way than Little Girl. Big Girl will be more afraid much more easily than her sister... In a lot of ways it's good that I'm so busy with my job that I can't be a hovering mother keeping them from every hurt, because that's exactly what my "Mama Bear" heart wants to do! These little hurts and the lessons that come with them, are important in their social development. That's not to say that I want them out there getting stomped on... I just don't want their first heartaches to be huge life-altering things. Just like everything else in this life, everyone needs to start out with training wheels.

Hubby is doing pretty good. He's starting to get involved in playing with a worship band again. Unfortunately the band in question is not at the church we're currently attending. At least he's playing again. He's a much happier person when he's making music.

That kind-of reminds me of someone else in this house... ME!

And Big Girl too... It has been confirmed to us that she really does have perfect pitch. For anyone unfamiliar with that, it means that she can decipher the exact pitch of a sound. She has named random notes played on a variety of instruments in a number of ranges and timbres, and can name the pitch accurately. She's done this with a flute, violin, trombone, piano, and even a glass harp! It's amazing! She first started doing this with a video my mom had at hear house for the girls to watch. Since then we've been quizzing her every now and then, and she can do it. She also has an amazing sense of musicality in her. She "hears" her piano pieces with crescendos and ritardandos, and plays them that way. She's got to make music. It's just IN her.

That's all I've got for now... Well, I could go on for quite a while, but that's all I've got TIME to blog!

Maybe I'll blog about Little Girl's birthday present... She wants a super-suit with a cape and mask. I'm thinking I'll try to make that over Spring Break!

No time for blog

There is just no time for this thing anymore. As I type this, I have a load of laundry in the dryer, several ready to be folded (waiting for me while I am on my computer), a suitcase to pack, and a dishwasher to unload. Of course, this being a Wednesday, I went to work today. Tomorrow morning I am leaving my house to go out of town at 5:00 AM. The list of things to do for work includes keeping up with the choir blog... I can't hardly to THAT, and it's a work responsibility.

I probably don't have any readers anymore anyway... My friends are keeping up with me on Facebook, which is my main recreation lately. Oh well. Life goes on!

Whoa... Time is Flying By

Over a month without posting... I'm falling off of this thing. I guess that was bound to happen as I got busier. The December concerts, and then the holidays... Now that it's January, you'd think things would be settled down for a bit, right? Oh, no. Not so.

From the first day back in 2010 to my next performances, just under 5 weeks.

Nobody cares about that stuff. *shrug*

We had a great time over the holidays with our girls, making memories, starting new traditions, hanging out with extended family... It was fun. And it went by so fast. We all got just a little bit too accustomed to sleeping in, and then it was time to be up at 6 AM all over again.

What hit me in the week between Christmas and New Year's was that I kind of missed work. I like my family, and I like being able to relax, but I missed making music, and looked forward to the week after New Year's when we'd be going back to "normal".

I would like to update my readers on how things went at the December concerts. The concert for the giant choir school was awesome. We even had a CD made of the performance, and my choir sounded great. The dynamic contrast could have been better, but that's almost always true, especially for young choirs. At the tiny choir school, I had willing students sing solos, and the whole choir sang four things together. It was a tremendous success. It surprised me who all wanted to do solos. It was a nice change of pace to have the format so different from the last choir concert we did in October. I did get a little in trouble for scheduling that concert the night before finals started, but it was the only date available on the calendar, so they let me keep it.

That was also my mother's birthday. On her birthday, she came over and helped me set up for the concert, played for almost all the solos, and the choir songs, and then helped me tear down the decorations and put away all the chairs. She's amazing. I have the best mom in the world. No offense to any other moms out there. She the best one for me, and that's not debatable!

So here we are, just finished with the first two weeks of school in 2010, plugging away. Next post may be Spring Break! I'll try to do better than that, but I can't promise anything!