Tonight was the spring recital at Poppy's music school. There were about 15 students performing and Poppy was the first one. She has been practicing her song, Lightly Row, all day lately and we were so proud of her when she performed it perfectly up on stage...
You could tell that this time around she was not nervous at all about going up on stage and performing in front of a crowd. I still can't believe how quickly she is learning to play the piano and the fact that she still loves it so much. We are sooo proud of her!
Today was Poppy's much anticipated concert debut. As I type this, I am still in shock that she did it! Her teacher asked her if she would like to perform on stage sometime before Christmas and her answer was, "No, I will let you know when I am ready." And then after Christmas her teacher asked her again and when I mentioned that we would go out for ice cream afterwards, she quickly changed her answer to, "Yes! When can I do it?!"
Here is the video, followed by a play-by-play in pictures... (The concert was at her music school - Buffalo Suzuki Strings.) (and check out Sam trying to get on stage just as Poppy was going on and then you can hear him applauding at the end)
Waiting for her turn to perform...
Introducing herself...
She did such a great job!
Taking her bow...
And the sweet treat afterwards...
We are seriously so incredibly proud of her. She has gone through such a transformation over the past few months - growing up both physically and mentally. And I am so excited that we stumbled upon Suzuki Strings. It was just this past summer that Marc and I both thought Poppy might like piano lessons and when I checked around for a place that would teach her at 4 years old, Suzuki Strings was the only place that I could find. It has been a huge time commitment, but seeing how confident Poppy was up on that stage makes everything worth it. I am a seriously proud mama today. :)
Poppy is still doing awesome with her piano lessons. Just a few weeks ago she went from learning little songs on just one hand, to her first real song using both hands. The first week trying to learn this song was rough. But one day something just clicked and she figured out how to do it. She absolutely amazes me. Especially because I have been practicing this song just as long as she has, and I can't even come close to playing it.
My favorite part is that she absolutely loves playing! She loves practicing! Almost every single time she walks by the piano, she stops to play a quick song. And Sam is not far behind her with his love of the piano either, I'll have to post one of his videos soon...
Poppy has been taking piano lessons for about 3 weeks now. She is blowing me away with how fast she is picking this up. I mean, blowing me away. And she absolutely loves it. We are taking lessons at Buffalo Suzuki Strings and the suzuki method is very unique. The first part of the process is that Poppy has a cd of all the songs she will be learning and they encourage her to listen to the cd daily. So I put it on her ipod and we have a copy in the car and surprisingly, she asks to listen to it all day long. And it's so peaceful that it calms Sam down if he starts crying in the car. I can't even remember the last time we had to listen to her princess songs - she really prefers to listen to the piano music. And then as soon she realized the songs on the cd were the same songs she was learning to play, it made her want to practice even more. She has already learned how to play 4 variations of twinkle, twinkle and her first real song, Honey Bee.
Between her daily practices (which she unbelievably has yet to protest about) and weekly lessons and music classes, this is all very time consuming. But seeing the results so quickly and to see how passionate she is about it makes it all worth it.
And as promised, here are all the rats we have in our house. A rather unusual amount of rats, wouldn't you say?
