Piano lessons, brought to you by Steve Jobs

Fun fact about Amanda: when I was a cadet at West Point, I got to play a duet on the piano with Billy Joel. It might have been just Heart & Soul, but years of piano lessons made that possible. And I received those years of piano lessons courtesy of my mom, who has now been teaching piano for over 40 years.

Since my brother moved back to Texas, he's close enough that my mom sees my niece almost every weekend. With that convenience, she began teaching my niece, keeping the family tradition of everyone-must-play alive. Unfortunately, the 9 hour drive from Spring to Fayetteville kept us from taking advantage of the same set up, and our budget (and available parenting energy, frankly) kept us from getting John and Caroline signed up for lessons here.

Enter Steve Jobs. Or, more accurately, the iPad.

I am so fortunate that my job provides one to me, and just recently, my dad gave one to my mom. It took a couple of false starts, but we have mastered the genius app FaceTime, and we now have weekly piano lessons.

How does that work, you ask?

Exactly like you would think. It's truly the next best thing to being there in person.

I am grateful to all of the bright minds at Apple. My kids don't see nearly enough of their grandparents, and selfishly, I don't see nearly enough of my parents. I can remember as a kid thinking, "how cool would a TV phone be?!" while watching Knight Rider and Buck Rogers. That was the stuff of a far off future when we all drove spaceships and kept our hover packs in the closet next to our moon boots.

I don't have that spaceship, and moon boots are sadly absent from my house. But I do have kids that are starting to learn how to play the piano, learning from a teacher who lives over 500 miles away. Can't say I imagined that in my wildest dreams.

Friday Feature: Caroline's schoolwork

Extraordinary - or "Extrordanay," but a pretty good attempt - not really a word I expected my second grader to use. Lo and behold, her GT work came hone, and there it was.

I could totally appreciate the way she described time moving. I could appreciate even more the face she gave herself when time was dragging by. That is one unhappy kid at a school desk. So unhappy, her face is bright orange.

I hope she finds some of the little moments to be as extraordinary as I do, even when they're moments spent doing math.

You live where?: Opening Day

Right here in the heart of NW Arkansas there is a $50 million dollar diamond.

Baseball diamond, that is.

The Arkansas Naturals, the Kansas City Royals' AA affiliate, play right here in our backyard at Arvest Ballpark. You can't beat minor league ball: $10 tickets, $3 parking, and $1 cokes on opening night. The young men play with energy and enthusiasm, the mascots happily take picture after picture, and the mid-inning entertainment is non-stop.

Caroline and John with Slider, the new Naturals Mascot

Fleece jackets, fleece mittens, and fleece headgear don't normally signal opening day, but it's been a cold spring so far. At least it wasn't raining.

We only made it through a few innings - it is a school night, after all - but the Naturals are just another great thing about living in NW Arkansas.

Getting to toes up and checking out the backs of their eyelids

I really don't know how I got so lucky to have two kids who don't fight bedtime. No tantrums, no meltdowns, no daily begging to stay up late. Longer days do prompt questions about why they have to go to bed when it's still light out, but never an argument.

No doubt, my kids can backtalk and whine with the best of them, so this isn't about them being perfect little angels. It just seems that somehow, we've avoided bedtime drama.

I will take at least a small amount of parenting credit. We've had the exact. same. routine. since they were infants. And since my intent with this blog is to capture the little moments that make up our lives, that's what this is about. The routine itself.

Step 1: Daddy preps the bedrooms. My kids have no idea that turndown service is a semi-luxury, available only upon request at most hotels. Because they've had it every night of their lives since they've been in big kid beds.

Step 2: Shower time. In this step, I do have an idea how lucky I am that we've moved on from baths to showers. Other than "Mommy, I'm ready" when they need conditioner or body wash on their scrubbers, they can manage this by themselves. Huge quality of life upgrade when we made the bath --> shower transition, despite the fact that Caroline may not get all of the conditioner out of her hair most nights. Trade offs.

Step 3: Jammies. Which, as you can see, are laid out and ready to go, along with Swankies and the approximately 52 stuffed animals that each child needs to sleep at night.

Step 4: Brush the teeth. For better or worse, I turned this task over several months ago. It's still done while heavily supervised, but no more Mommy wielding the toothbrush. Put that on the list of parenting tasks that hold exactly zero moments of nostalgia for me.

Step 5: Read books together. I read somewhere that one of the mistakes many parents make is to stop reading to their children once they're reading independently. For me, it's one of the few moments of stillness and nontalkingness in our house. I relish it, and hope it lasts a long, long time.

Step 6: Heater on, white noise on, lights out. Don't judge on the white noise. Like most parents, I'll do whatever it takes to get uninterrupted sleep time for us and for the kids.

Step 7: Sing a song. When they were babies, I had a repertoire of lullabies, and I sang the same ones, in the same order, every night while I rocked with them. I can't remember now (where was my 360 blog then?!) exactly what order I sang them in, but they included Hush Little Baby; My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean; Rock A Bye Baby; Jesus Loves Me; Jesus Loves the Little Children; Home on the Range; Somewhere Over the Rainbow; and Rainbow Connection.

Once the kids were old enough to make requests, we added Itsy Bitsy Spider; the theme song from Thomas the Train; This Little Light of Mine; Deep in the Heart of Texas; and various Christmas carols as the season approached us. John tends to stick with one song much longer than his sister - Caroline will request a different song every few nights, but John has a favorite and hangs on to it. We sang the theme song from Thomas (They're two, they're four, they're six, they're eight...) for months on end.

Tonight, we sang Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Three and a half months post-Christmas, it still hasn't gotten old. Caroline chose My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, and for her, she requires back rubbing during the song. She says she can't sleep otherwise. Oh, the drama.

Step 8: Hugs, kisses, and I love you.

Which, when you think about it, is really how we all want our days to end, no matter how old we are.

Funny conversations at my house

Random funny conversations we've had over the last couple of weeks.

Caroline talking to her brother: "John, we'll see. When I say "we'll see," it's not the same as when grown ups say "we'll see." because when grown ups say it, they mean no. When I say it, it means probably."

Upon being presented with the Easter baskets, plastic eggs, and a pair of fuzzy bunny ears:
John: "Caroline, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Caroline: "I don't know, what are you thinking?"
John: "We can hide the Easter eggs and whoever wears the bunny ears is the Easter bunny!"
Caroline: "No. I am not thinking what you are thinking."

On our way out to eat:
John: "Where are we going for dinner again?"
Mommy: "Ruby Tuesdays."
Caroline: "Never heard of it."
John: "Caroline, it's where they have specials in Tuesdays. Wait, no. It's where they give away rubies in Tuesdays."

Playing The Fifty States Game (an old Hasbro board game that Mom dug out of the attic and sent to us):
Mommy: "John, draw a card - what state do you have to go to?"
John: "Mozzarella!!"
Mommy: ????? "No, John, sound it out. That's Minnesota."
John: "But mozzarella is a state, right?"
Mommy: "No. It's a cheese."
John: "Oh."

Friday Feature: John's Easter artwork

Thursday was Parent/Teacher conference day, so I got to see artwork that was hanging in the hallway outside of John's classroom.

This Easter is going to be electric! It's electric!

In case you need the translation: "My egg is electric. It will shock you. It will hurt a lot. My egg has a lot of wires. It is big."

Now that I've typed it out, I'm trying to decide if I should be a little worried. Or disturbed. Or just chalk it up to the crazy imagination of boys. Hmm.

Let me eat cake!

One of these days, I'm going to post about how lucky I am to work where I do with the people I do. Today is a little preview, because of this little tidbit I just learned: every Wednesday is apparently CAKE DAY around here.

If that doesn't give you enough of a glimpse into the way we roll at the Fayetteville, Arkansas, Procter & Gamble office, let me elaborate. I work in a two story building, with different sub-teams in different parts of the building. On the opposite side from where I work on the ground floor is a group of amazingly talented analysts, many of whom I've gotten to know in the break room over coffee refuels.

One of the young men, Chad, apparently has a mom who is a finalist in the World's Greatest Mom showdown. She bakes a cake every single Wednesday for him to bring to the office. How I am just now learning about this after almost two years here is a mystery to me, but once I learned of this astonishing perk, I wasted about zero minutes in hustling across the hall and asking if I could join the indulgence.

Oh. My. Goodness. Easter week, Easter cake. Homemade red velvet cake with coconut frosting.

There were also coconut cupcakes with coconut frosting, malted chocolate Easter eggs, and Easter candy canes for the handles. You know, Easter basket cupcakes!! Too bad I ate mine before I thought to stop and take a picture.

I can see this becoming a problem. An Elaine-sized problem. Anyone remember the Seinfeld episode where Elaine has to get her afternoon cake fix? I can totally see that being me in about a month if I keep indulging.

Business may be tough; the customer may always want more than we can give; but if there's cake on Wednesdays, I'm pretty sure it can never really be that bad.