Family, The Baboon Congress

rich in children part 2

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today’s post comes from tim

daughter emma is a piece of work.

we were talking at thanksgiving and she said her sister asked  her what it was like to be the kid who wasn’t the favorite of either parent.

my sister was over thanksgiving and enjoys some aspects of my dysfunctional  family. she said the way the girls play remind her of cats

emma was the one who when we moved into our house at age 5 , loved the house because it had the dancing stage in the living room. when you came into the house there was an area  10×20 that stepped down 4 steps into the living room and had a full wall of windows in front of it so when it got dark the reflection of the stage in the windows was like a 2 foot tall screen of  selfies as you moved to your favorite tunes.

the first time i saw her dancing i was in awe. she is good and fluid and fun to watch. i would have to be discreet though because she didn’t like to be watched and would stop if she felt the eyes on her. she can do it with friends and cohorts but not and audience until…. she asks for an audience and performs for the correct amount of time and then is done until next time.

olivia her older sister is majoring in musical theater and loves to perform.

her brother devin is the josh groban of the family and sings like a rock/opera/r&b diva in the shower , at his church/in the car/reading his email… so she comes by it naturally.

last year emma started taking voice at macphail and she said she enjoyed it. her sister takes her from school and brings her home except now her sister has theater rehearsal i need to go pick her up.  it has been a total of maybe 3 or 4 times. well i park and go in and go upstairs to the spot where the lessons are.  macphail moved to a new building a couple of years ago and the sound is more or less contained in the studios. you can hear but it is muted and soft. so im sitting in the hall and thinking its too bad i cant hear emma because the rooms are so quiet, all i can hear is a voice coming from down the hall that definitely isn’t her. its nothing like her. so i get up and nonchalantly mosey down the hall and ge to look in the little 8×10 window in the door as i walk by and the voice is coming out of the back of a head that looks just like my daughters. i go down to the end of the hall turn around and come back to see that it is indeed coming out of the head that from the back looks to be like my daughter. i sit and 2 or 3 minutes later i discovered that it was indeed emma singing as she comes ot of the room with her teacher.

i commented that i couldn’t believe the sounds coming out of the room were coming ot of emma and they booth looked at each other and laughed. the teacher said he thought she should do a performance at the student sign up thing on the main stage for one of the 3 or 4 nights in the spring and she said she thought that was a good idea.

i went back 2 or three weeks later and olivia had her lesson going on and she was doing these melodic classical/jazz scales and emma was singing her song in the room next door. there was a chair in the hall that was smack dab in the middle of the  two rooms and i was in it getting stereophonic daughters singing and it made me cry.

she and her teacher came out of the room again and we talked for a minute again about her performance on the macphail stage. the teacher left and emma told me that she had signed up for a talent thing at school. in front of the class? yeah. alone? with a friend who sings and plays piano. have yo sung together before? is she any good? will she play piano? will you play piano or guitar or ukulele?

we dont know, we are figuring it out. its going to be a blues  thing. ella / bonnie raitt?

we will figure it out

so tonight i fall asleep on the couch and am wakened by her playing the uke and singing like a young lady who knows what shes shooting for. not ella, not bonnie not taylor swift but somewhere along the lines of the music my daughters play for me when i get to let them lead the musical choice of the time and place.

i was told that is the song she will be performing next friday at school. . olivia at the childerns theater performing for a  4 day run and emma doing a 5 minute blip in front of a group of peers at high school.

i have a week to look forward to next week

 

what are you looking forward to?

37 thoughts on “rich in children part 2”

  1. thanks dale. this is the one in thought was coming up yesterday.
    typical typo’s 20 foot glass wall not 2 ft. etc…
    next week is tomorrow.
    the play for olivia starts tonight and emmas performance is tomorrow. i am in a hose of singing this week.

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  2. What am I looking forward to? Not having children, I will have to settle for anticipating a couple lutefisk dinners…(yes, I’m serious, I am looking forward to them and the company that accompanies them)

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  4. tim, you are blessed with such talented children (as am I! :)). Isn’t it wonderful?
    I am looking forward to my youngest son (the one with special needs/autism) coming home from college for winter break. I’m so proud of him for all he is doing. Looking forward to all my boys getting together with us for Christmas. And then making sure to have a day off afterward to recover. Although the whole empty nest things is pretty nice, too.

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    1. enjoy joanne
      glad the gang is getting together for the holidays.
      i think boxing day ought to be plugged in here officially the way it is in other places.
      the day after christmas is absolutely a holiday.
      congrats to your son and to you

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  5. I’m looking forward to my brothers & wives arrival..probably late today or tomorrow. Oldest brother and wife flew into Mpls to ride the journey: brother with brother trucking the horses and sisters-in-law in the carr with three dogs…cat is in the truck.

    If I were home I’d look forward to a lutfisk dinner with Cynthia and my cousin…we’re Kaffe Fika ladies who attend some of the church dinners together. I go along for the company-not the food. I avoid crowds of people and don’t like “dinners”…but it’s always fun with the Fika ladies!

    I will be missing the grand kids activities but daughter is great at videos for me…not the same as being there but I’m grateful for the videos.

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    2. We know our CA grandson by facetime, which to him makes us abouyt as real as the people he sees in person, as near as we can tell. He and his father are coming next Spring. That we forward to.

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  6. skype and facetime are amazing pieces of progress.
    i remember seeing the ideas at disney futureland and thinking abot the day it could be true. here it is

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  7. It seems for sure that Sandy will have the pacemaker on her colon permanently attached. That we are looking forward to very much. We can do a bit of traveling again, such as up to the North Shore.
    I am defying orders from the hand specialist for typing. But little point. Cannot do much for the carpel tunnel anyway. Nothing to look forward to there.
    My two MN grandkids are decent musicians, voice and instruments. Nothing outstanding, but they have fun, which is like both of their parents. A flutist and a tenor sax player.
    They use an old Mac Laptop as their family computer for music and movies. But Mr Tuxedo uses it to invent card games, more like role-playing. They get very elaborate. He loves thinking them up. They are each a few pages long. The computer crashed. So my daughter had to tell him the sad news that he had lost that work. He just laughed at her and pulled out the three flash sticks. She was not aware he had them backed up three times. Classic Mr. Tuxedo! She told him she did not expect the kid who cleaned his room once in three years would be that organized.
    This fall the school has both of them tested for math. They want both of them to be accelerated, but there is no real way to do it in a small school sort of in the middle of nowhere.

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    2. edx may be a bit advanced but there is an online math series that allows the elementary school age kids to work at their own pace. he can do 5th grade work in 3rd grade etc. when he is doing 12th grade math in 5th grade they will be able to figure out how to get him into accelerated math classes
      i will think if the name of the math classes

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    1. We will be in Portland this July, (as long as our nephew actually graduates from High School). Perhaps you can look forward to lunch or something with us!

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      1. Realistically, my visits with my daughter and Liam average out to be three weeks apart. I’ll see him Christmas Eve. With luck, maybe once more in this month. I do want to try to get a good photo of him. We never found time to do that last year, so my last good shot of him is from the Christmas of 2014.

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    1. It can’t come soon enough.

      True confession: back before he got the nomination, I was remembering when Bobby Kennedy was shot…and wishing that that could happen to DT. I am truly a bad person.

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        4. I should clarify that I’m not really wishing that DT be assassinated. Part of my problem is I’ve studied enough about Hitler’s rise to power and seen enough similarities to DT’s tactics to be frightened at the future possibilities. That does NOT mean I think that DT is another Hitler – it just means that his tactics and words give me pause – quite a bit of pause. Prior to his nomination, once I was thinking about Bobby Kennedy and how upset my family was when he was shot…and then the thought flitted through my mind in a “what if that happened now” sort of way. It was just a flitting “what if” thought, and not something I would ever advise anybody to act upon. (This is when I wish WP had a delete button, because I didn’t think when I posted my comment how it could sound to others.)

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  10. I look forward to time off at Christmas, visits from son and dil for New Year’s, and daughter at Christmas. Daughter just informed me that she is moving “out East” right after graduation. She means Maine or Massachusetts. I don’t know if I look forward to that. I have no idea why those two states.

    Husband drove north to his Reservation today. I look forward to hearing that he is safe, as the roads are not too good from our storm.

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  11. Love this piece, tim – you made me cry too.

    I’m afraid I won’t get up for book club this weekend – but I’m looking forward to all the Christmas holiday events taking place in this town. Will probably write a blog about that…

    Let’s see, looking forward to the day when (and if) my mom’s broken arm has healed enough that she can go back to her regular apartment.

    Looking forward to getting out the Christmas decorations and seeing what I didn’t toss before moving.

    Looking forward to finding that box with the heavy duty mittens.

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  12. I am looking forward to seeing middle daughter get surprised by youngest daughter in a couple weeks. YD is telling MD that she’s coming home (from college) on the 18th, but she’s really coming on the 14th and I’m the only person that knows it. I have to come up with an excuse to leave the house by myself and go pick her up and then watch the surprise happen. Haha!

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