My "Mommy Moment"

Abigail is 7 and she had her very first piano recital last night. She did very well.

We started piano lessons with Abigail sometime in February. I didn't want to give her lessons but Daniel is insisting I give all the children lessons. He feels it is wasteful to pay somebody else to teach them to play the piano when I'm a very capable pianist. In a way he is right. I just don't want to give my own children lessons!

When we first started, it was very hard for me!!! I've been been playing the piano since I was 7, so to have to THINK about all those basic and try to explain them to a 7 year old was no small task for me!! But once she had the basics, it went better. I'm pleased with how well she seems to have picked it up. I have students who have been taking lessons longer than she who are still struggling with some things she has already nailed down.

She was very excited about the recital. Memaw and Pappy couldn't come this time so Memaw sent us to JCPenney's to buy Abi a new dress to wear. Last Saturday I had her play her song for the residents of the nursing home where we volunteer and she did very well. I wanted her to have SOME experience of having played in front of people before the recital!! How very intimidating to go on the platform in front of all those people (possibly 100?) and play that giant black piano that mommy plays all the time!!

At the recital last night, she trotted right up there, sat down, and played her song from memory with minimal mistakes. She kept saying "I played the 'C' twice". Cracked me up. But it was kinda difficult to leave "teacher" mode and enter "mommy" mode for the recital. Plus, I'm such a perfectionist myself that I wanted to say "it was ALMOST perfect". I bit my tongue and congratulated her. As we were leaving she was already talking about what song she wants to play for her next recital! LOL She has no clue how much better a pianist she is going to be in the next 6 months or a year. She is so happy with her current accomplishment that she can't see past it to realize that by the time the next recital rolls around, she is going to think these beginner songs are silly!

Money Matters

For a long time I've been debating how to teach my children how to save money. I was never taught to save money and its been a struggle so I want to teach my children.

I raided all their saved money and added in "a little extra" that was sent to them by Memaw and saw that each child had enough money to open juvenile savings accounts at my bank! I was so excited!! So I figured out the tithe for each child and put it in a baggie clearly labeled with each child's name. Then I figured out their savings amount and put it in clearly labeled baggies. Now, while I'm doing this, Elijah and Lydia are standing beside me wanting to know why I'm taking all their money. I try to explain to them that they are going to keep half, the bank is getting some and that we are giving back to God the part that is SUPPOSED to go back to God.

Please forgive my naivete, but nobody was excited about this venture with the exception of MOM! I was so stupid!! I thought they would be sooooo excited to have their own savings accounts!!

Ignoring their pouts and moans of displeasure, I load up the 4 younger children to go pick up Abigail from school. Surely my oldest child will be excited to have her own savings account. Wrong again. All 6 of us trot into the bank with solemn faces, the children because they have to give the bank all their money and mom because she is the only one happy about opening new savings accounts!!!

Lesson learned - there are two things you don't have to teach children - how to lie and how to love money!!!

Hoping they will appreciate my mommy being "mean" when they have a nice nest egg in the bank at age 21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .