Returning to the Piano

Yesterday, the kids had their first piano lessons in over a year!

This may not seem like anything terribly noteworthy, but I've been putting this off for one reason or another ever since we moved a year and a half ago.  So it feels like a major victory to me.  Something to finally check off my never ending to-do list.

I had Bentley and Kendra taking piano back in Manassas-- one of the girls from my congregation would come on Saturdays and spend a half hour with each of them.  She was really good (she would arrange her own choral numbers for the youth to sing-- something I can't even imagine being able to do!), and fairly cheap, so I was very happy with that arrangement.

When we moved, I had every intention of getting them right back into lessons again.  But our ward is not terribly musical, and there weren't any easy teachers to be found.  We have a community website where I asked for recommendations and got some, but I hate contacting strangers and talking about money and stuff, and then we were busy with soccer, and then it was Christmas and then it just never happened.  I think most of my energy was consumed with preschool and worrying over Craig's awful job.  Another semester slipped away, and with all five kids home with me, there wasn't any chance I'd get around to it in the summer.  I toyed with the idea of starting up with the new school year (yes, this last September), but once again soccer happened and killed any further motivation I might have possessed.  And we were so busy, I couldn't imagine adding anything more to the mix.  But as soon as Christmas was over, I was determined.

I emailed and called all those same people from my first post on the community message board.  I got prices.  I talked to people.  And I picked a teacher and he came yesterday.  (I was even good and informed the other teachers we'd found someone, so they wouldn't be left hanging!)

I like his style-- he showed the kids how learning the scales leads to understanding music and had Kendra playing a simple Ode to Joy just by calling out to her which finger to push down.  He explained to me that he likes to focus on this method, and then later teach them how to read music as a secondary skill for playing.  I don't think reading music is particularly hard, so I'm fine with that being put off a bit.  And I think it's good for Bentley to have a male teacher-- I know before he'd worried that maybe piano was just for girls, and then was impressed when his Sunday School teacher (also male) was very good on the piano.  (You may recall that Bentley never believes anything I tell him.)  Also, this first lesson was spent all together, rather than spending thirty minutes with one and then switching to the next kid.  I don't know if all their lessons will go this way, but I did feel that they were getting more time, even if it meant less individual attention.

So I have high hopes for this.  As I stood in the kitchen getting dinner ready, listening to them all plunking away on the piano, I felt like maybe-- just maybe-- I was doing my job right as a mother.