Sisterly practicing

Monday was nutty. The usual trip to Nelson for piano lesson, the grocery shopping, the grocery-unpacking, a quick meal, a trip to my mom's to look at digital proofs for the SVI 2008 brochure, then home for math-time with Noah, editing some desktop publishing, cooking dinner, making up and cutting appointment cards for my evening clinic, eating dinner and dashing off over snowy mountain roads to my evening adolescent sexual health clinic in a neighbouring community.

I did not manage to do my parently duty and help my 5-year-old practice her violin. I ran out the door calling "try to do some violin review without me, okay?" I got home at 10 pm, just in time for some math with the girls and reading aloud. It wasn't until the next day that I asked Fiona whether she'd managed to do any practising.

"Yes!" she told me with enthusiasm. "Sophie and me, we did it together!" And then she took me to the white board. (Where would my family be without our white boards?) "This is our list," she explained. Apparently Sophie had helped her practice, taking a lot of initiative, totally of her own volition, and very much welcomed in this role by Fiona. They had lit five tealight candles to set a special mood for their collaborative practice session. They had created a list of things to be practiced (I was extra-proud of the fact that "tone-warmup" topped the list). And then they had taken turns at various practising tasks, and finished up by playing different sight-reading exercises simultaneously, with hilarious results, according to Fiona.