Musical Madness

Zaya and Mim have started piano lessons again. We have a very sweet family friend who has agreed to give them, even though she doesn't typically teach piano. She is one of the organists at our church, and related through marriage, like just about everyone else in town. (I tell Art it's a good thing I moved into the community. It needed some fresh blood.)

Anyway, with the lessons has come a renewed interest in playing the piano, and Zaya continues to enjoy playing anything that isn't actually part of his lesson. Today he decided he wanted to play chords and eighth notes, so we had to skip ahead in his Primer Christmas book a bit. He regaled us with a very halting version of Jingle Bells for a while, then suddenly began inventing new characters. You knew it was coming, right?

Nitty is an eighth note. Tito is a chord. (Possibly schizophrenic?) Throwbon is a rest. He showed us all of them on the piano. And yes, watching someone introduce you to an anthropomorphic rest on the piano by, well, not playing it, is an entirely new experience for me.

Then there's Bluebonnet, the fermata. If bluebonnet captures you, he holds you. "Usually for about six beats," according to his creator. He also takes dots that he sees and sticks them into his dot. When Zaya is pretending to be Bluebonnet, he runs around like a very bow-legged cowboy. He grabs us and holds us for six counts, then we can go.

The character clan continues to grow, so that I can no longer keep track of all them. The Twilight Zone had nothing on the Teeson home.

In the picture are various characters drawn by Zaya and Art. It also includes Art's to do list. And yes, he was mocked for putting an apostrophe in the word chores, because he certainly knows better. In his defense, he was also writing the kids' chore lists and drinking coffee. (Mommy had already been gone for several hours, but that's another post.)