Skip to main content

Slow Down!

People keep telling me to cherish my time with the baby - she'll only be small for a short time. And I know they're right - for the past six and a half months the time has been flying, but in an orderly, gradual, progressive kind of way.

But I've been working for three days. I mean, just about non-stop, from rehearsal to lesson to concert to board meeting to bed, and Zoe's been at home with Steve. And suddenly my baby is hardly even a baby any more. She has two teeth and some hair. She can crawl - fluently, fast, and purposefully. She can say Emm, Emm, when she sees me, and can make signs for Milk and More. She can sit straight up like a teddy bear, and can get herself into that position easily. I had seen these skills before, but she's better at them now. And NOW she can suddenly pull herself up to stand. And use our furniture as a basis for gymnastics instead of just a barrier to crawl around. And take things out of bookshelves, boxes, and bags and play with them. I'm a little bit in shock.



Slow down, Peanut - I was just beginning to get used to the idea of a mobile, smart baby, but I'm not ready for a walking baby. That's too much baby for me. That's really not a baby at all. That's a child. Aren't there other skills you could work on first? Like sleeping through the night? Or the O-M-M-Y part of my name?

Comments

  1. LOVED this post, Jennet - especially the last sentence. Just to give you a heads up - you need to plug cover that outlet behind the crib, get rid of whatever is plugged into it and lower the mattress now...I can send you my triplets to show you why - they'd be happy to demonstrate. When Josh was one something he unscrewed a whole bolt from under the kitchen table. Stellar...
    HUG,
    Jen

    ReplyDelete
  2. Done, done, and done - the same night the photo was taken, actually. We are slow and kind of dumb but not actually negligent...

    Thanks for your comment, and thanks for reading, Jen!

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Whew - I am glad that outlet was taken care of.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IDRS 2014 - Day Two and OUT

I'm writing my Day Two report while all of my colleagues and friends, new and old, are well into their Day Three experience.  I was terribly sad to leave NYC, and IDRS.  In past years I've found myself sort of oboe-ed out by the third or fourth day, but I was nowhere near that point last night when I had to begin my schlep to the airport.  On the up side, I am home and spent the morning with Zoe and Steve, and I'm safely on the correct side of Lake Michigan well before my concert tonight, which was the important purpose of my travel plans - but there are SO MANY MORE great events happening at NYU.  Best of luck to everyone performing! Yesterday, among other performances, I enjoyed THREE recitals featuring music for oboe and bassoon.  Be prepared for a husband-wife recital coming down the pike in the next year or two, as I loved much of the new music that I heard.  First I enjoyed hearing ToniMarie Marchioni and two of her colleagues from the University ...

Practice+ App - and my FIRST EVER GIVEAWAY

You know how, when you are practicing, you need to have your metronome on your stand and turn it constantly up and down as you work through a technical passage?  And you also want to play in tune, and make sure you are staying consistent with your pitch.  So while your metronome is clicking away on your stand, you also have to turn half-way around to look at the screen of the big tuner which has to be plugged into the wall because it eats batteries otherwise.  And if you also want to record yourself to listen to your progress, you have to have your laptop on with the big mic plugged into it, and that’s on still another surface, so you have to move your stand around so you can orient to all three, and then your giant stack of music-in-progress falls off the stand and onto the floor and out of order and the next ten minutes are spent not practicing at all but just trying to return to normalcy. Does this sound familiar? I was sent a free promo copy (full disclosure) of an...

Beauty of Sound

In our dress rehearsal Saturday afternoon, the conductor did exactly what I often do to my students - he asked the violins to play more beautifully, and they did.  He didn’t tell them how, or give them a flowery expressive speech, he just asked for more beauty of sound, and they immediately gave it to him.  To a great extent the sound we produce is set, based on our equipment and the shape of our mouths and our bodies - but it can be altered, too.  Adjustments in reeds and instruments can go a long way, but the key change we can make is in our own minds. I don’t know how to explain it physically, but if you determine the sound you want to make you can produce it.  Or at least you can lean in and approach it.  This is something I’ve been paying a lot of attention to lately in my own playing.  As I prepare the Saint-SaĆ«ns Sonata to perform on our Oboe Studio Recital (tonight at 7 - details HERE ), my approach is largely about beauty of sound and vibrato....