The Fanfare

Chelsea is still trying to get my daughter interested in piano lessons.  So far, all she can get my daughter to do is listen to her play and let her help in figuring out the songs she's interested in playing for her right hand.   My daughter is not one bit interested.   She can learn a new song quickly, then get better and better playing it more quickly and after she's learned it to her satisfaction, she moves on to the next song to pick out. 

Part of the problem is she knows she's going to have to learn a new way to use braille.   The six dots in the standard braille cell have been remapped to be used to represent music notation and notes.  When Chelsea tried to introduce this new system to my daughter, she met extreme resistance.   We had bought an entire piano course because you can't teach music reading to a blind person with standard sheet music. 

The introductory concepts should have been easy, but Chelsea couldn't get past the remapping of the keys themselves.   If they hadn't put braille letter stickers on the keys a year prior, it might have been different, because the stickers on the keyboard at the time were completely wrong for true braille music notation.  And my daughter hated it. 

There was more though.   When you type in braille, your thumbs are used for the space key alone.   Every key you type doesn't need the thumbs.   Thumbs aren't part of the words.   When my daughter sits at the piano, she plays with four fingers and rests her thumbs on the wood below.    Chelsea doesn't know if she can get her to break that habit—and my daughter doesn't want to. 

She does, however, want to play songs.   The last time Chelsea was at our house. she sat at the piano with my daughter and Reese said, "you start with the fanfare."   Chelsea dutifully started playing a song using both hands and my daughter chimed in at the right points with her single note at a time melody.  

They play like this a lot.   Chelsea is trying to get Reese interested enough that she'll want to learn more.  For now, she's being a stubborn brick wall.   Chelsea, knowing her well, thinks pushing her isn't going to help, it will make her less interested in playing altogether. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl All Day Pool Time:  They were in the pool all day.   My daughter did a good bit of screaming because she was in pain from the sunburn we accidentally let happen yesterday.   Everyone feels so badly about it.   I think ultimately it was my fault because even though she got to the pool very early, I should have thought about sunscreen even then.   She's better now and she and her brother played all day and got along almost the entire time,   I spent some time with them each, but they were having lots more fun without adults, doing imagination games all around the pool.