"Music?"

Justin loves music. A few months ago we were at my parents' house and he was playing my mom's piano. He doesn't pound on it like most kids do, it sounded more like he was playing actual songs. I had been playing a few songs using the music and when he saw it, I told him that it was music. Ever since then, he recognizes music notes everywhere we go and always says "music." The day after I told him that, we were at the church for my cousin's wedding and he found a prayer book. The first half of the book is all of the readings for the year and the second half is all songs. When Justin first opened up the book, he told me "story." Then he kept turning pages and found the music and told me "music." It's kind of cute the way he says "music." He pronounces it right, but he always says it with a question mark at the end- "music?"

A few days later, we were home again and I had gotten a dictionary down for some reason. Justin was looking at the dictionary and came up to me and said "music" and sure enough he had found a page that had music notes on it. He finds music notes all over everywhere and always asks me to play music on my computer. He bounces all over when he sees me going into my music folder on my computer. He recognizes a bunch of different instruments as "music" even if he doesn't know them by name yet.

This last weekend we went to my parents' house again for my dad's birthday party. My sister and I were sitting on the kitchen floor and we were talking to Justin and playing with him. All of a sudden he stops and says "peeneano" (piano) and runs to my mom's piano. I opened it up and he climbed up on the bench and started playing. Nobody said ANYTHING about the piano but he suddenly remembered that Gramma has a "peeneano" and had to go play it. Pretty much all weekend he played the piano, even after he smashed his fingers when he tried to close the keyboard lid at bedtime. He even saw my high school senior portrait with my violin and told my dad "Mommy, music."

I'm excited to see this interest in him- music runs on both sides of the family and I think music is such an important part of life. It will be fun to see where this passion grows.

Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you,
following you right on up until you die. ~Paul Simon