Category Archives: Melody

About our middle child

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Adoption Summary

We started Annie with the kids while I was folding clothes last week.

I turned it off after the “We Got Annie!” song, because I was growing more and more convinced now isn’t the right age for that movie.   But it was a terrific up-beat ending for their introduction to the movie, and the girls danced around with their dolls till naptime, replaying that final image:

We’re excited to adopt!

Melody and Natasha created their own versions and variations of songs on that theme, and one of Melody’s seemed particularly insightful (All voiced by her):

A: What do I need?

B: Nothing I don’t have now.

A: What’s wrong?

B: Nothing’s wrong, so Let’s adopt our dollies!

All accompanied by delighted leaps and twirls.

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Auditioning

I went and auditioned last night for a play I know next to nothing about.

It felt a bit like an ethical quandary, truly:

Is showing up like an eBay bid, where if you “win” (are selected) you are bound to follow through and roll with whatever’s given you?

I resist being bound, but understand the thinking that would assume this to be basic courtesy.

I did get a “call-back” today.  But it’s for a time-slot I have already committed elsewhere, so I left a message saying so and am waiting to see how it shakes out.

Melody had her first public solo last night.  (that link should take you to YouTube,  The video wasn’t embedding properly, so I changed it to a link)

You’ll probably have to jack your volume, but I was pleased to have any recording.

“I want to do that again next time,” she said as soon as we got back to our seats.  “With different people, though.”

I told her she was very brave to march up there and do it, and asked if she was scared.

“I was nervous when I walked up,” she said, “But singing was exciting.”

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Story Prompts (#1)

I have this game I bought a couple years ago to use for the storytelling class I was developing at the time.

Looking for something new to do with the girls (I’m experimenting with letting Melody skip naps) I pulled it out and tried on the fly to see if I could adapt it to their level.

The gist of it is to tell a story using the elements shown on your dealt cards to reach the ending written on your “happily ever after” card.  Complicated to explain, simple enough to do.  With a little practice.

Anyway, I only got so far as to say it’s about telling a story from a card and laying out three “place” cards as examples when Natasha said, “A forest!  I have a story for that one!”  And Melody picked up the Island and said, “I can tell a story from this one!”

So I put away the other cards and came to the computer to write down what they told me.

I couldn’t type nearly fast enough; certainly not enough to catch the inflection and pauses that (seriously!) added so much to the basic stories their words expressed.  But it was only our first time, so I hope we’ll both get better at this.

Natasha’s story:

Once upon a time there was a princess and one day her father who had a beard wanted her to go to the forest.

Now, the princess didn’t quite want to go, but her father insisted because he wanted her to go so she had to go.  But because it was a dangerous place ….he made a good solution they would both go to the forest.
…

Still the king would protect.

They all loved their educational ride through the forest and one day they soon died from a very bad forest fire from a dragon that burned the whole huge forest.

Melody’s story:

Once upon a time there was a king, an island, who wanted his queen to go to the dangerous land of the deep, deep, deep stream of futures.  And there’s trolls in the water.

So the king went himself and killed all the trolls and then he walked silently through the water until he came to his home again.

The end.

“That’s the short story,” she finished, in her normal voice.

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We’re all Sick

But we’re on the way better.

On top of the general yuckiness we all feel, Melody seems to be in that rough transitional stage between keeping naps and leaving them behind.

This morning Melody desolved over something and wouldn’t tell me what was wrong.  I found her bubbling in her room and scooped her up, pretending she was my doll and crawled into her bed with her protesting all the way.

I snuggled us both under the blankets and made all the silly comments about my squeeky doll (it’s a game we play reletively frequently) until she was giggly then calm, and we just lay together getting warm before she looked at me, all bright-eyed and cheerful again and we could just talk.

It’s interesting to me how much warmth, touch (and food, to complete the Comfort Trinity) work near-magic with these kiddos.  So sweet.

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It’s not ‘just’ a song

This morning I heard Melody singing something weird and I discouraged it.

What did you just say?

She could tell I didn’t like it and gave me her ‘coy’ face, which at the moment meant,  I can tell you didn’t like that, but I thought it was cool.

“It’s only a song,” she said, trying to put me off.  I felt a tightness in my chest.  Maybe words are too important to me.  I don’t know.  But I couldn’t stand to hear that.

Without a pause I told her very seriously, “But songs are words, and words are choices, and we want to make good choices.”

Don’t know if it meant anything to her, but, as it usually does, saying what I meant just at the time I wanted to comforted me.

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Note to Self:

You don’t have to “win” the argument to be right: it’s like Natasha wigging out because Melody says the sky is green: just say it’s blue and move on.

End of the year note: The tables definately turn. Natasha knows how to push Melody’s buttons in just the same way.  I use the same line no matter who’s wigging.

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Leaning toward…

Suzuki.

Not really sure why other than I like knowing exactly what to do, and it comes highly recommended by several people whose experience I trust. Almost more than my misgivings.

It could be very expensive; we’re still figuring that part out. But the instruments at least (might) be taken care of.

This all began, seriously, back on the 6th, when the Suzuki-learning family in our church did a song as a family. It was lovely. Their 6-year-old began alone on the cello, was joined by his 4-year-old sister on the viola then joined in turn by their mom and dad on violin and mandolin.

Natasha was sitting in my lap absolutely absorbed. When it was done she snuggled her “sad” face into me and when I asked her what was wrong she said quietly in her sad voice, “I want to play violin.”

So I went to the other mom in church who did Suzuki with her kids, and asked how it was for someone utterly new to the system (the mom of the Suzuki family grew up with it, so I imagined it would be different for them than me).

This lady said that she hung on to most of her kids’ instruments and offered to loan them to me.

Actually having instruments available for use has opened this up to a real possibility, so I’ve been nosing about for more details.

As soon as she heard Natasha say it at home, Melody (Jay called her the echo machine) said almost at once that she, too, wants to learn violin.

This friend from church also has a 1/8-size cello (from when her boy started) so I mentioned this to Natasha and by the end of bed-time ritual tonight she said she’ll do cello and Melody can do violin.

We’ll see if this sticks. Or even if it goes anywhere.

Naturally I’m as intrigued by this as every new idea and it’s probably a good thing that nothing “real” or useful for beginners like us seems to be available before the fall.

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Can you tell what we’ve been talking about today?

Background: I’d just brought the kids in from playing outside (before they wanted to), and even hot chocolate didn’t quite counter the blow.

“Coco!” is definitely an established word for Elisha now, though.

Natasha to Melody [bossy, not frightened]:

No! You can’t go outside without a grown-up. There are people who will come into the yard. If there’s not a grown-up there, they might think you’re theirs and take you away with them.

That’s why there always has to be a grown-up around when you’re playing outside so anybody walking by will know you belong to someone.

Not quite the way I explained it, but it works on an (apparently) un-frightening kid-level.

I always like to know how their thought-processes are working, and hearing her explain it in kid-language to her sister both allowed that and saved me a conversation with Melody that might have been frightening before it was understood.

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All the Kids are Sick Today

Melody’s fever seemed to break last night, but she’s still coughing and emotional/clingy today, along with other symptoms.

Elisha has a low fever and isn’t keeping anything down.  We keep feeding and watering him “against orders” because Jay figures if the boy’s going to be throwing-up anyway we might as well make it less painful.

This is a new symptom that we hope doesn’t mean he’s got a different virus. We really don’t want a whole other round rotating through the kids.

Natasha registered a mouth temp of 104 when we took it this morning, but the Ibuprofen seemed to manage it and she’s almost normal again.

It’s interesting how she and Melody seem to feel fevers differently. Melody feels cold and shivery, wanting snuggled, while Natasha was irritable and hot, kicking off the blankets and complaining.

She, too, wanted Mother near, but not particularly to snuggle.

Elisha fell asleep again partway through the morning and while he was resting the girls and I got to play some memory (from some of these printed cards I pasted on purple cardstock) and started teaching them how to remember by cumulatively reviewing after each pair was turned over.

It was challenging at first, because the first 10 or so cards were all different. But that turned out to be a good thing once we started turning over duplicates, because everyone remembered where the matches were.

We didn’t keep score and we helped each other with what we were close to. So it was a neat time.

It was devolved by necessity after Elisha woke up. He’s getting better about not messing up games on-purpose, but now he’ll try to play and confuse things that way (the larger cards cover so much ground it’s easy to mess them up once they’re about half paired-off).