Parking Lot

So, the space between the groups of 2 and 3 black keys on the piano turns out to be the perfect size for parking cars! This is a common sight at our house: He loves cars and he loves to crash (currently pronounced "prash") them. He was pretty upset, though, when he discovered that his Lightning McQueen was too big to fit between the keys. :)

P.S. I guess I'm kind of weird about announcements. That, and I wanted to see if anyone was really reading my blog anymore. :) But yeah, I'm due October 19th. I think it's a girl, because this pregnancy has so far been really nice. I've been a little sick, but nothing like last time. I could maybe even do this again!

Easter Egg Hunt

We braved the rain and the cold to go to the Spanish Fork Easter Egg Hunt on April 3rd. So did about 1000 other people, but I was really impressed at how well organized it was. They had a separate field just for kids 2 and under, so Dorian didn't get trampled by any bigger kids. This is right when we got there, before he really knew what was going on. We successfully explained to him that he was going to go pick up eggs on the field, but he didn't understand why he couldn't do it right NOW. Poor kiddo. He was in tears before they could finish counting down. (On another note, when I look at pictures of myself lately, I think I understand why people always guess that I'm pregnant before I tell them...my face gets so soft and round...)

And he's finally off! Examining his egg (notice the Anakin tattoo on his hand...) I wish this picture weren't blurry. I was trying to capture the way he kept trying to give his eggs to the other kids. (Which the other parents always made them give back....isn't the etiquette between parents regarding their kids' behavior a little weird and stressful? It's like we tell our kids to share, but no, don't take that little boy's egg...everyone's so worried about doing it wrong...) Okay, so this turned out to be kind of fun... Yes! Candy!

um...have you seen my camera cord?

Next time we need someone to get the TV working at my parents' house, I'll just put Dorian on the job.

Dorian and his blanket

Dorian loves this blanket that my piano student Hannah made for him. He even likes to be tucked in on the stairs (don't worry--he doesn't sleep there...he's a crib-only kind of sleeper). In other news, I have been asked to contribute to a new blog for piano teachers. I know a few of you fall into that category, so I thought I'd mention it here. I will be posting once or twice a month, and the other contributors are all fantastic teachers, so give it a look if you are interested. I'm excited to be able to blog in depth about piano teaching, one of my favorite things in the world.

Mini Mozart Graduation

At the end of January, Dorian graduated from his Mini Mozart class at the Art City Music Academy.

He loved playing the drums. His cute teacher, Miss Laura, is sitting next to the keyboard, and the other mom is a girl I grew up with in Kaysville, who just happened to enroll in the same class! They played with lots of rhythm instruments. Dorian loved to dive through the hoop! He was a pro at the keyboard. I just liked this picture of his cute face. He was so proud to get his certificate of completion! He loved getting a sticker on his hand at the end of class each week.

This semester he has moved on to Toddler Tunes and is already loving it!

Clean White Shirt

Maybe I haven't posted for a while because I haven't taken many pictures or videos lately. Today I was going through photos from the summer of 2008, when Dorian was born, because I still haven't printed a single photo out of the thousands I have taken since he was born (20 months ago!). So I was trying to decide which ones to print, and feeling like I was choosing way too many but at the same time, not nearly enough. I think I have exactly one picture of myself as a newborn baby. I narrowed Dorian's down to 8 from his first day of life, and another 5 or 6 from the next day. That's as many pictures as my mom took of me during my first, I don't know, 2 or 3 YEARS of life. Do you think he will appreciate having so many pictures of himself, or do you think he will roll his eyes in boredom whenever I pull out the scrapbooks? Oh well, I'm not doing it for him, I'm doing it for his wife.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the last day this shirt was white (why did I let him eat an apple while wearing it?): I've moved all his toys into my office, so we hang out in there a lot. He likes to squeeze between the bookcase and the wall, and he pretty much always has a car or two in each hand. Wouldn't you like to see the rest of my bookshelf?

Children don't really misbehave

Here's another idea from Teaching Children Self-Discipline by Thomas Gordon that has helped me immensely, especially in those moments when Dorian is throwing his lunch across the kitchen, or dumping his milk all over his tray and the floor. It's the idea of problem ownership, which is something that I have vaguely understood in the past, but never yet applied to my relationship with my son. It's like this (p. 107):

[When an adult perceives that a child is misbehaving,] the "badness" of the behavior actually resides in the adult's mind, not the child's; the child in fact is doing what he or she chooses or needs to do to satisfy some need...put another way, the adult experiences the badness, not the child.

...When adults begin to see children as persons like themselves, engaging in various behaviors to satisfy normal human needs, they are much less inclined to evaluate the behaviors as good or bad.

...[This] doesn't mean, however, that adults will always feel accepting of what [the child does, but they can understand that] the child is not a misbehaving or bad child, not trying to do something to the adult, but rather is only trying to do something for himself.

I paraphrased a bit, so you could get the point of it without reading the whole chapter.

The author goes on to discuss strategies for working with young children, even babies and toddlers, such as finding out what they need, making some kind of a trade, and/or modifying the environment. These are great, and I already knew them, but for me, just stepping back and understanding that I am the one with the problem, not Dorian, helps me to see things in a new light and switch gears. And occasionally he is the one with the problem, and I can let him work that out too. Like when he has a poopy diaper but won't lie down for me to change it...

And on and on. Read the book. It's good stuff.