I have been wanting to get Rosa a toy piano for ages now. I have been watching craigslist to no avail, and always keeping an eye out at garage sales, but it's always easier to come upon something great by accident than when you're making a concerted effort to find something.
In the end I broke down and bought a new one. I just wanted to get one for her (and me!) so badly! I hadn't originally planned to get pink, but they were out of white and red, and there it was... so enticing, and so pink! So I got it! I love having this toy piano in the house. Rosa loves banging on it (and climbing on it... look out!), I like to plunk out songs from our Music Together class on it, and Jeff is teaching himself piano from the little book that came with it - he is an expert at Pop Goes the Weasel now! I guess you can tell by all the exclamation points in this paragraph how happy I am to have the piano. Sometimes it's worth it to give in to instant gratification.
And the other thing. Rosa has now entered the not so adorable phase of dropping things off of her high chair. Oh boy is that fun. I used to give her extra spoons to occupy her while she ate, but now they, and everything else, go crashing down to the floor. And then she leans way over the edge of the tray and looks at what she's done. If I catch something on the way down, I'm sure she feels cheated. It sort of seems like the dropping things over the edge phase coincided with beginning to give her more finger food. I guess that makes sense. Eating is becoming more and more challenging, not only because of throwing stuff onto the floor, but she seems to be in a fussy, feisty phase right now. I hope this one passes quickly. She seems like she may have quite a temper - strong-willed is the nice way to say it. When she's eating and decides that she will no longer wear her bib, she grabs it and pulls so hard that her little face turns purple, and there's nothing I can do to keep it on. Jeff says she's our little Incredible Hulk. But as all the books say, I'm doing my very best not to turn mealtime into a power struggle. Tonight, she just wasn't going to eat any turkey and vegetables. All she was going to eat was avocado, but at least she ate lots of it. That's better than some nights. I read somewhere that avocado is one of the best foods for babies, so I guess if she's in an avocado-only phase for a while, she'll survive. Oh Rosa!
And finally, here's my new haircut:
After Rosa finishes her piano solo, she stands up and takes a bow. May this be the beginning of a budding piano career.
ReplyDeleterosa dropping food reminded me of when i listened to neil degrasse tyson (astrophysicist) on npr - he was saying if his kids dropped food, he was fine with it if they looked down and observed, cuz then it was an experiment and they were learning how the velocity and arc of how peas rolled... but if they weren't interested in looking, then it bugged him.
ReplyDeletehere's a quote from him:
"So much of what the child does is exploration of their universe, but as adults you simply view it as them making a mess. And they should stop it or clean it up. I think most adults would say 'cut out that racket, you're getting the pots dirty, get them off the floor.' And all of a sudden you have completely squashed an entire childhood experiment in acoustics. Not enough people think of it that way, but that's exactly what it is. Why do different pots sound differently when you hit them with different spoons? What's going on there? And I'm not expecting a lesson plan to come out of it, but just the stimulation of a level of curiosity that allows somebody to make a difference as a scientist or a technologist later in life."
here's a podcast - but i haven't come across the one i heard about dropping food. he starts talking about kids at 18 minutes.
http://tinyurl.com/r4k2ah
what i want to know:
1. what view does his wife have on all this?
2. who cleans up when it's ultimately time to clean up the "experiments"?
3. wow, lots of patience!
so, here's to rosa - your little musician/astrophysicist!
Rosa does observe where the spoon or food or whatever falls... if it falls outside of her view she cranes and cranes her neck and won't eat anymore until she can see where whatever she dropped went. Oh yes, she's a scientist!
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