Week in Summary

It's been a while since my last post. Work has been busy with the Boss out of town and me teaching his class for him. Good experience, but pretty time consuming...

The Maestro has had what seems like a turn-around with both practices and lessons. He had a lesson on Wednesday that went great, probably his best one ever. The Maestro and the Teacher worked on plucking together. She would pluck a string, and he would tell her what string it was, and I THINK, repeat it. He had better note recognition than he had ability to repeat the correct number of plucks. The lesson lasted for quite a while, until things got a little too loud and off topic.

Thursday he had what seemed like the most fun practice he and Riley has ever had. They came up with several games that helped him show what he has learned so far. I think he used the enthusiasm from that practice to help him carry on to another lesson Saturday morning.

He was not convinced that he wanted that lesson Saturday. He said that he did, but he wasn't very helpful getting ready. After, he apparently came out and said something to the effect of "I wasn't sure that I wanted a lesson today, but then I decided that I did!" I'm glad he did, because he got to come home with his PRACTICE BOW! When he showed it to me, he told me that the rule was we don't use it on the cello strings. It is just for using ABOVE the stings. Let's all celebrate the birth of Air Cello! To the uninitiated, a practice bow looks like a dowel with stickers, elastic bands, and a corn-remover cushion on it to mark where things like fingers and thumbs go.

I had to spend all day grading exams Saturday, but Riley said that he carried it around all day. Sunday we had Hildegard over for dinner and she said that he was showing the bow-hold of a boy with three weeks practice. So that's great! Of course, she pointed out that we have learned not to count on linear consistent progress with him, and that next week he might have a terrible bow-hold.

What is good about that is that we were trying to figure out how to get him to hold the bow against his finger-tips, and he apparently doesn't need to. He isn't supposed to hold the bow with his fingers; he holds it against his fingers, fairly close to the first knuckle on each finger. This is just the sort of thing that Riley can take pictures of in practice.

Dinner went pretty well. The Maestro was at the end of his tether after church, and taking him to the park for a nature walk was only partially successful in renewing him this week. He was fairly well behaved once Hildegard arrived and we got settled. He even went to bed with her still in the house, which surprised me. I found out Monday morning that he had been counting on her still being there when he woke up in the morning. If he had known she would leave, he might not have been as ready to go to bed. He was quite disappointed.

The main challenge now is getting a perfect bow hold, and repeating it 100 times. Any suggestions are welcome. As we know, he tends to decide that he knows something and stop demonstrating. "Mom, I can do that already! See, I showed you three times already!" Right, only 97 to go.