Our Kids

I was looking forward to taking Piper to the symphony. Lela had a great time with Mystique when they went, and Piper was pretty excited for it to be her turn. Plus, I always love the one on one time… you get some great conversations out of the girls when you just let them be.

The girls love going places in my car. It’s not because of me or the car, of course… it’s just that it’s different and they get to do different things. They can open and close the doors by themselves, let themselves out of their booster seats, etc… Fun times. And Saturday was no exception… Piper loved driving in the car to the symphony. She was reaching for me and I’d reach back and grab her hand which would cause quite the giggle. She told me about the billboards as we drove by… counted some cars… it was fun.

We got to the symphony and because my wife rocks, parked in the garage where all we had to do was climb one set of stairs and go up an escalator and boom, we were in symphony hall. Nice!

We got there early enough to let Piper wander around a bit and check out some of the instruments. She played with some hollow tubes that you bang together to make a note… an instructor put some folks together and gave each of them a beat to do with their sticks. She attempted to make some sort of melody, but really… with a room full of kids she had no chance. I like the effort, though.

We got to our seats (which were great) and settled in. The real Phoenix Symphony came out, then the first chair violin, then the conductor. Piper noticed a harp and pointed it out to me, she was pretty excited to see one. One of the violinists has an aid dog which is a golden retriever and I pointed that out to Piper, which triggered a “why does she have a dog up there?” question. I thought it was cool seeing the golden up there… I love those aid dogs, he just lay down right next to the violinist and settled in for some relaxing music.

Once things started it seemed to go well for the first 40 minutes… we listened to some music, then the conductor explained some things to us, played some sample music, etc… By about 40 minutes in, though… Piper started to get restless. 45 minutes in and she was ready to go. I know that because she told me so… multiple times.

I didn’t want to be rude and stand up as the dude was talking, so I whispered to Piper that we’d leave after the next song. She was semi-ok with that… and got down in the aisle to stand up, try hang on the (empty) chair in front of us, etc…

Finally the next song started and it turned out it was going to be the last song. By this time Piper was back in my lap (she couldn’t see over the person in front of her), and about three minutes into the music… she was fast asleep on my lap. It was kind of sweet, so I just held her through the song, enjoyed the music, and gently woke her up when it was over to tell her I had a great time and I loved her.

The girls first school program is tomorrow! I think they will just be singing songs but for all I know they will be picking their noses on stage, either way we will be sure to get it on video so stay tuned. This is for their two day a week recreation class where they learn to take direction from someone other than me, learn to sit quietly etc. Of course I don’t think the girls have had any trouble doing that and they have really enjoyed the classes, it is the most social they have ever been. There is another set of twins in the class and that is cool, fraternal girls too. The parents bring snacks, which makes me cringe at what they bring, and on that day the girls get to be special helpers (they so love that). We signed up to do it again starting in January and we are also going to be taking Spanish and Ready to Read which should be fun. Piper is really ready to read and like everything else I suspect that Lela is right along with her but just less vocal.

PS. Jason took Piper to the symphony, I am sure he will post all about that experience soon:)