(no subject)
This has been a weird week and I'm really tired. Spent hours yesterday working in my bedroom with my mom helping me. I never unpacked my own bedroom. We've lived here for nine months now, and I never unpacked my own room. I mean, it was unpacked enough to live in, but I never unpacked boxes of books or pictures or hung anything up. I don't sleep in my bed because it hurts my back, I sleep on the couch, so there was very little incentive to make it homey. But I'm planning to buy a new mattress in the next few months and really I just wanted a bedroom that looked nice for whatever reason. I rarely even go in there to be honest, but maybe I will if it is a nice place to be. My final analysis after finishing was that I have too many books. Is that possible?
This week I have also been working on some individual skills with the girls in a really systematic way that is so strange for me. Maria has to learn some soccer skills for this premiere team and needs some serious practice. She is pretty far behind most of the other girls. So we have 30 minutes everyday where she is required to work on a list of ball skills. I don't have a clue what she's really supposed to be doing, so I mostly stay out of it and just say "do it again" over and over which, as I'm sure you can imagine, goes over really well with her adolescent attitude. But they told us to work on it at home, so work on it we will. Either that or we quit the team and she doesn't want to do that.
Zoe is really struggling with the dance moves in her floor exercise. She is NOT a dancer and it has gotten to the point where she has made noises about quitting because she is so frustrated. So we are working on these at home, something I really don't do a lot because she spends so much time in the gym and so many of her skills are dangerous now. I discourage a lot of gymnastics skill work at home these days. Back walkover down the hallway? Fine. Back tucks in the living room? Not so much. But we are spending 30 minutes a day working on spins, curtseys and leaps. She hates me for it. If I could convince her she is graceful and lovely, it would go a lot better. She just feels silly.
Luci will be auditioning for The King and I with CYT in about two weeks so she and I are working on her song for about 20-30 minutes a day. I am finding out how much I still know about singing. Today we had an impromptu lesson, while pulling the lid off the piano, about sound and vibration because I could not seem to convince her to lift her chin off her chest while singing. I showed her the strings in the piano and how if you hold it still it won't make a good sound and explained our vocal chords with pictures and how putting her chin down holds them still so they can't vibrate and suddenly my child opened her mouth and a gorgeous tone came out. Sheesh. This kid is so hard to motivate because you have to find a "good enough" reason for her to do something the way you want her to do it, but once you do she will never go back. It drives me bananas and I have to think WAY too hard. I often feel like God whispers in my ear when I'm talking to her because amazing stuff will come out of my mouth that I didn't even know I knew.
This week I have also been working on some individual skills with the girls in a really systematic way that is so strange for me. Maria has to learn some soccer skills for this premiere team and needs some serious practice. She is pretty far behind most of the other girls. So we have 30 minutes everyday where she is required to work on a list of ball skills. I don't have a clue what she's really supposed to be doing, so I mostly stay out of it and just say "do it again" over and over which, as I'm sure you can imagine, goes over really well with her adolescent attitude. But they told us to work on it at home, so work on it we will. Either that or we quit the team and she doesn't want to do that.
Zoe is really struggling with the dance moves in her floor exercise. She is NOT a dancer and it has gotten to the point where she has made noises about quitting because she is so frustrated. So we are working on these at home, something I really don't do a lot because she spends so much time in the gym and so many of her skills are dangerous now. I discourage a lot of gymnastics skill work at home these days. Back walkover down the hallway? Fine. Back tucks in the living room? Not so much. But we are spending 30 minutes a day working on spins, curtseys and leaps. She hates me for it. If I could convince her she is graceful and lovely, it would go a lot better. She just feels silly.
Luci will be auditioning for The King and I with CYT in about two weeks so she and I are working on her song for about 20-30 minutes a day. I am finding out how much I still know about singing. Today we had an impromptu lesson, while pulling the lid off the piano, about sound and vibration because I could not seem to convince her to lift her chin off her chest while singing. I showed her the strings in the piano and how if you hold it still it won't make a good sound and explained our vocal chords with pictures and how putting her chin down holds them still so they can't vibrate and suddenly my child opened her mouth and a gorgeous tone came out. Sheesh. This kid is so hard to motivate because you have to find a "good enough" reason for her to do something the way you want her to do it, but once you do she will never go back. It drives me bananas and I have to think WAY too hard. I often feel like God whispers in my ear when I'm talking to her because amazing stuff will come out of my mouth that I didn't even know I knew.