Spring violin

My girl is seven as of last week. The cake rigmarole rolled around again. This year, a swimming pool cake to match the swimming pool party, and a girl who was born in the water and can never get enough of swimming.

Her maturity was demonstrated to me this morning when she told me she caught and flushed a cockroach and a mosquito while she was in the toilet. I am so proud of her acquiring this skill: a little bit of toilet paper, a swift swipe, and a crush.  So ends, I hope, years of me being frantically summoned to kill the insect she'd found and was terrified of. (I know, I'll still have to get the ones she can't reach.)

This morning I also found this note she'd left me (but she had also told me and said goodbye while I was in the shower):

Spring is rampant around here, and what better way to celebrate it than violin practice in the sun? This is what the little lady did on Monday.

She sounds pretty good, and I love watching her, not a smile to be seen on her serious, concentrating face, until she's finished, and then she lights up. Music is a wonderful skill to have. She's had a year of lessons and almost daily practices, so it's a hard-earned skill. But it's a little by little, keep-at-it kind of task, and she is getting there.

She doesn't always practice what she's meant to, but takes little trips sideways, jumping ahead here, making little sideways trips there. It's a good thing, I think, to play as you play.

Jack, in contast, only practices what he has to, and after four years of it he can whip out a mean fiddle-ish jig. I love it.