We are on our second week without Hildegard. After the semester ended, she flew home for Christmas, leaving us bereft of both her company and organized cello lessons. The kids miss her terribly. For the first few days after she left, I would come home from work and Hildr would give me her usual grinning "Daddy Home!" She would then follow with "'Dard Home?" No, Honey. Hildegard isn't coming over today.
She had a video that she lent to us to use in lieu of lessons -- Zen and the Art of Cello Teaching, or something like that. I suppose I should go look it up for the exact title, but my feet are warm where I am. I would say it's a series of video-taped cello lessons a lady is giving a young girl. Rather than having his own lesson, The Maestro gets to watch someone else's. The Maestro has enjoyed it. The first time he watched some of it, he was amazed that the ski jumps and knuckle knocks (two exercises designed to train his cello hand to move up and down the fingerboard) were legitimate exercises. From his incredulous reaction, it seems he thought Hildegard had made them up to distract him while he waited for his real bow. If they are on a video, however, they must be really real. Funny boy.
Riley has gotten organized with a chart to check of what he works on everyday. She has had vestigial versions of this before, but now that he has his real bow, she needs to keep track of his 500 demonstrated bow holds before Hildegard can check it off. With keeping track of the 100 holds on the practice bow, she tried several versions of motivating sticker charts, including 100 glow-in-the-dark stars he could put up in his room. All this was despite his consistent lack of motivation by sticker charts. Since he has to show 500 this time, there is no way he can keep track of the stickers or stars or coloured-in saxophone cutouts. She marks them down in her book, and also keeps track of whether he did knuckle knocks, or ski jumps, or slap bass, or whatever. I think he is somewhere above 50 bow holds this week.
Friday we went to a friend's annual Christmas party/Concert. Everyone invited is supposed to demonstrate a talent. The first year I did a chemical demonstration (a clock reaction), Riley read a story and the Maestro did an impromptu demonstration of his conducting skills. A number of people there were taking violin lessons and Riley has always credited their violin performances with starting the Maestro on his musical quest. I disagree, but that is another post, I suppose. Last year, I was sick, so I didn't do my own talent, but Riley gave a slide show of portraits she had taken. I did do a brief trumpet duet with the Maestro so he could show off his "High" and "Low" notes. A coworker of mine gave the Maestro his trumpet, and he played High notes with the bell up in the air, and low notes with the trumpet pointing down to the floor. Then he borrowed a toy M-16 assault rifle and turned it into a bassoon for a number of months. We finally returned it, in time for this year's party.
This year I was sick again (my annual holiday tradition, it seems) so I passed off my Gluten-free brownies as my talent. Hildr skipped around the room while people performed, saying "Dancing… Dancing… Dancing…" and showed off her dress. I think her talent is acting cute. The Maestro and Riley played their cellos. The Maestro showed rest position, some knuckle knocks, and "Rock and Roll", wherein he lifts his elbow to roll his bow to the higher strings. Then, while Riley played Twinkle, he jammed. At the conclusion, they both stood with their cellos and bowed together to thunderous applause.
At this point, Hildr had stopped dancing and wanted to explore upstairs. She turned 18 months last week, and it was past her bedtime, so I was impressed that she had lasted that long. Besides, she wanted some "Pink! Juice!" from the kitchen. Apparently, after we left, the youngest performer there did "Tuck-a Tuck-a Stop Stop" on her violin. This will become relevant momentarily. The violin performance, I mean, not the juice. The juice was "Licious!" though.
Sunday, Riley tried to get the Maestro excited for a cello practice by having him show me what he had learned. This has never gone well. I rarely see him have a cello practice at all, and even then, it is never one the Riley considers a good one. So I was sitting, waiting for him to get out his cello, then to settle into his chair. Then he didn't want to get a good bow hold. Then he was rolling of the floor showing me one of his "tricks". It occurred to me that he was actually working very hard to avoid showing me anything that he could do, so I went to the bathroom instead.
As soon as I left, I started to hear cello sounds from the other room. From in the bathroom, it's hard to tell who is doing what. Sometimes Riley plucks or bows on Carolyn and has the Maestro tell her what she is doing. When it sounded like the practice was over, I came out and Riley told me the he had done "Tuck-a Tuck-a Stop Stop" on Carolyn! So far, he had only done random sawing, or an occasional long, drawn out note. He asked me if I had heard him play "Tuck-a Tuck-a Stop Stop", and I had heard someone play it, so I told him I had. Then I put my hand on his shoulder and told him that I was very happy with his playing, and was really proud of him. It was just like something out of the last five minutes of a sitcom. You should have seen his face light up when I told him I was proud of him.
Riley thinks that The Maestro was motivated to do a genuine Twinkle Variation rhythm because he saw another kid did one as a performance. I think it was sort of like a group lesson for him. There are so many advantages to having Hildegard as the teacher; the fact that he is her only student this year and doesn't have group lessons to go to IS a disadvantage, it seems.
I guess it was in the book "Helping Parents Practice" that Edmund Sprunger talks about how kids so really, really don't want to disappoint their parents that it sometimes paralyzes them. The doi9ssaz9azaa9aaAAZZXZS XSDCSS SQQsAaaqsqqwq q qqhb Maestro has some of that going on, I think, because he never wants to show me anything, but is clearly interested in my opinion of what he does. (Hildr helped me with that last sentence) Today, I found a way to kind of short circuit his fear of disappointing me, I think. What I ended up seeing was the best practice I think I have ever witnessed.
The Maestro has been sick since Christmas Eve, and has taken a nap nearly everyday. This is quite rare for a boy who is usually so driven to do whatever he is doing that he can't stop for meals or bathroom breaks. You know he is tired when he says things like "I'm tired. I want to take a nap." Yesterday I had to wake him up from his nap, and it wasn't going well. He and Hildr got into an argument about a puppet that they had been playing with earlier, so I got out another puppet, Dog. In an earlier attempt to get the Maestro's brain waves straightened out, I had turned on his Cello music listening CD, and he started telling Dog about the Cello and the songs that he knew. Dog asked him if he knew "Run Doggie", which is one of the Twinkle variations, and coincidently Dog's favourite song. The Maestro said that he did know it, and he knew lots of other songs.
After dinner, The Maestro had a Cello practice, and I got Dog out again to be his audience. I may be somewhat intimidating for him, but he had a great time showing Dog everything on his list, including a rough version of "Run Doggie". In addition to "Run Doggie" and "Tuck-a Tuck-a Stop Stop", he did knuckle knocks, ski jumps, slap bass, sirens and rock and roll. For the most part, he kept his feet on the carpet where they were supposed to be, and he did the "Up Like a Rocket…" song with his bow. I haven't seen that in at least a month. It was easily the best practice I have ever seen him do, without question.
It will be interesting to see how many times giving a concert to a puppet works for him. Will he be willing to demonstrate things to other puppets once he decides the Dog knows everything? We have a whole drawer of puppets…
After he was done, he and Dog had a wrestling match.
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