And I Thought Kat Was Crazy for Music...

So, Wednesday night Tea grabbed for a spoon I'd eaten some yogurt with. No biggie. If it would make her happy so I could chill out a few more minutes. We eventually got up and walked around a bit ending in the bathroom for a Mama break. While I was doing my thing, she was still playing with the spoon! She looked at something across the little room and went as if to get it. In doing so she lightly tapped the spoon on the floor. She was THRILLED by the resulting tinkling noise. She experimented a few times with sweet baby giggle interspersed.

Fast forward a little and she's WIDE awake and I'm trying to read the last blog I want to look at for the night. She's antsy and I want her to give me a few more minutes. So, I give her one of the cups I had water in. She goes as if to drink from it (nothing in it, of course) and makes a noise. She giggles. Then she sort of sings into it and giggles. She did that a few more times. She LOVES music!

I think I have neglected telling you that... she REALLY loves music. We've missed a few nights recently, but part of our night night routine includes spending a few minutes singing songs the girls want and a couple I want. Without fail, every time I start singing, Tea will pause what's she's doing (usually looking at a book) and listen and groove (she's actually rocking and swaying to the beat!). If she's standing it's even more obvious that she's close to or totally on the beat!

Additionally, she LOVES to play the piano. I've added PT to my homeschool notebook. PT stands for PianoTea... which means I'm supposed to make time for Tea to play piano sometime each day (except Sundays, no homeschool on Sundays). I do let her play piano on Sundays, if I end up there, but it's not something I feel I have to check off in my notebook. :)

On top of all that... and probably my favorite is a relatively new development in all this music love Tea has been showing. It's only in the last week or so that, when she's well and/or happy when she wakes up, Tea will SING! Seriously. It's SO sweet!!! Sometimes it singing with her mouth open and making a variety of tones. Other times it's more like humming. She's even mimicked a sort of scale I did one morning. I LOVE IT!!!

I don't know if I ever mentioned it here... I didn't have this blog at the time, but way back when Kat was little she hated riding in a vehicle in her car seat. Tea's in the same "hate feeling" now, I think. Well, when Kat was little and unhappy, Ria spontaneously started singing "Jesus Said Love Everyone" and by the time she was done with that REALLY short song, Kat was calm. THAT became the most reliable way to calm Kat in a vehicle! Well, Ria recently (with K. Christensen's kids, actually) started singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to similar efficacy with Tea! For Tea, it seems to work best with multiple voices. All Kat needed was Ria. Interesting, huh? :)

So, I have some music lovers!

Me and MY Music

Okay, so it's not "MINE" in the formal sense... like, I didn't write it or sing it or anything of that sort, BUT I'm totally diggin' it! Now, if you know me very well (mostly only some of my family will recognize this), music can really REALLY aggravate me. Perhaps even ridiculously easily. Most people have no idea why. I don't generally try to explain it anymore because when I have those to whom I've spoke look at me like I'm a bit nuts. If you know me, you might think they're right. But, seriously, I'm not any more nuts than most people! Anyway... I attribute this hyper sensitivity to music to a few things, but the main cause I'd have to say would be my experiences in Australia because it was after that trip and time that my skin became SUPER sensitive to tunes. So... long story cut REALLY short, I'm just SUPER excited to find these new bands that make my heart race and cause me to feel wonderful and thoughtful, but don't agitate my skin!! If you'd been in my skin trying to listen to lots of music (especially ANGRY MAN music and stuff with HARD base beats) you'd understand and be super excited right along with me. Well, you would if you cared. :)

I'm letting ya know that I've reformatted my blog to show only THE most recent posts (as in most recent 3). Why? Well, I want the YouTube music videos to be at easy access BECAUSE I would LOVE it if you'd check them out and tell me what you think! If you hate it, please state comments as kindly as possible. They each have MySpace accounts that you can check out for more of their rockin' vibes. And of course, there are more YouTubes of them.

The Surprise Unleashed

Have you been on the edge of your seat waiting to find out what Jess has been planning? Well, probably not... I understand. My present is NOT as big a deal to you as it is to me. :) That's okay. I totally understand!

Well, I was posing twenty questions to Jess and trying to figure out what it was that he'd purchased and put together for me. I thought it was something heavy and something he had to put togehter because Jess asked me a couple leading questions that conceivably could have gone either way, but the words he used to ask them totally lead me to believe the gift was heavy and had to be put together! Anyway... it isn't anything of the sort!

He's a trickster, my Jessie. You might not know it, but you never can tell with my guy. I must say, though, that since he made the decision to quit smoking, he has been SUPER thoughtful and loving... it's like I have the guy I fell in love with back! It's AWEsome!!!!!! And this gift is definitely another instance of feeling that my "old" Jessie is back. :) I say that because when we were early in our years together he listened to things I said and remembered little things. Then, later on he would pull things out of the air (it seemed to me because I'd forgotten what I'd said that had to do with the moment) and give me the most wonderful gift of a thing or time or something he'd made. Well, that's exactly what he did for me for this Mother's Day!

Back to the trickster bit, he totally packaged my tiny light present in an assortment of various sized boxes. Then he carried it in like it was super heavy! Right before I sat down, I tapped the box with my foot to sort of test out the weight. He knew he was caught in that trick because the box moved a lot relative to the tap, so I KNEW it wasn't heavy gift. 4 boxes into opening the package I finally found my present. What, what, WHAT was it, you ask?

Well, I would like to forestall your gratification for just a moment and take you back in time. A little while after Mother's Day last year Jess, the girls, and I went to visit my friend Denise Poleski. She's also the sweet lady who gave me the makeup I'm wearing because she doesn't feel her most beautiful when preggie and wanted to give me something to spiffy-up. It's working, too! heeheehee ;) Anyway, while visiting her to drop off cookies I'd made for her birthday, she showed us her Mother's Day gift. Have YOU seen the iPod Shuffle? OH MY GOODNESS!!! It is tiny and light and an exerciser's dream for occupying the mind with something other than thoughts or baby squeals! I thought it was super cool.

I'm sure I mentioned it to Jessie a few times after that and I'm sure I talked to him about my friend, Heather Harris's iPod and how she uses it to run. And, I know for sure, I stopped to look at a display of the tiny little music holders (MP3 Players) they have at WalMart once, really recently, when Jess was shopping with us. I may have even commented that I thought they were cool and wished I could consider such an expenditure. But I would never have seriously considered purchasing it for myself in our current circumstances.

So, it becomes ever more clear how Jessie's statement of, "Sometimes you need things you don't need," really does make sense for this gift. Have you guessed what he got yet? Well, if you guessed an iPod (of any kind) you'd be wrong. ^_^ BUT he did get me an MP3 Player! It's a 2 gig player so it holds lots and lots of music and Jess wants to buy a subscription to either a music download thingy or a book download thingy. Ok, so I'm totally WAY out of the lingo in this area, but still. You know what I'm talking about, right? I actually get a free month trial on the book download thingy and he was going to put load one onto my player, but he had no idea WHAT I would like, so he didn't. However, he DID put some music he knew I would like: Metallica, OUR song, and a song about an Island in the Sun (because that's what we live on!). He also did a voice recording that explained the gift. SO AWESOME!!!!

There is yet another reason this is a timely and WONDERFUL gift for me. You see, recently I was frustrated (as I am many nights when we come home from walking) with the girls AND Jess happened to be available to hear my complaint. I was sort of unloading my grief over their bickering in the buggy and wondered outloud to him if there was some way I could attach a 10-foot pole to the buggy and still safely walk with them. I have LOTS of invention ideas, so he could have easily thought I was working on something. He looked at me oddly for a minute and then smiled and I laughed because I really was joking (even though it WOULD be nice sometimes!!!). Well, this gift is sort of like a 10-foot pole without the actual distance AND it's much safer than the pole would be considering how sometimes I have to move quickly because people just don't seem to like walkers very much! I just have to make sure to regularly check the sounds around me and not turn the music up TOO loudly when they are being disagreeable with one another. So, my hour-long walks will be ever more soothing and much less stressful for me now! :) Thanks to my dear thoughtful hubbie!!!

Now all I have to do is get a CD player or mini radio for the girls and we'll be set! ^_^ I would even consider one of those toteable movie players, but then I'd have to worry about timing reading class for right before our walk.... I dunno. It sure would keep Ria occupied, though! :) But, Ria really isn't the one that has the problem with the hour in the buggy.... ahwell