Keeping Up with the Joneses: My Little Beethoven

Blake started piano lessons just after the first of the year. We quickly learned a few things about Blake. One being Blake inherited Brad's dad and younger brother's gift to play the piano by ear. Its pretty amazing. He can turn his back to the piano while his teacher plays random notes and Blake calls out every note he plays. Its so crazy to witness a four/five year old do this I must say. The other thing we learned, well, that I knew, but became more apparent...Blake is kind of a perfectionist. He wants to be the best at whatever he is doing. And if he struggles with something? Well, he's over it in a New York minute! Enter his love/hate relationship with piano. Learning the piano, like lots of things in life, takes practice, practice practice, and it would frustrate Blake to the ends of the Earth not to get it on the first try. It has taken lots of patience on my end to sit with him at the piano and work with him on certain practice pages until he could build the confidence on his own. Blake's teacher is verrrrry strict. Like piano is the most serious thing in the entire world to this guy. Which is great and all, but he definitely pushes Blake to be his best which Blake doesn't always like. So, Blake started to say things like "I hate piano" and "I want to quit." I never wanted to be the "stage mom" pushing my kid into something he hated. But his recital was also really close and I wanted him to see it through, so we told him he could quit as soon as his recital was over. But then a funny thing happened. Blake practiced his recital piece and once he had more confidence I took his music book away and he played his recital piece by memory and he became so incredibly proud of himself. He couldn't wait to show his teacher that he had committed his piece to memory. He played it every chance he could. You could see the pride bursting out of him. You could see the sense of accomplishment Blake felt. I was so incredibly proud of him and happy that he had learned such an AMAZING lesson at just five years old too! Sometimes things in life are hard, they might not always come easy, but if you work hard and believe in yourself, you can achieve what you set your mind to.
The day of the recital we dressed the boys in their finest duds and I just about died from the absolute cuteness from the boys. Oh how handsome they looked. On the way to the recital Brad asked Blake if he needed to go over the music in his head to prepare and Blake said, "No daddy! I am awesome at my recital piece!" I mean, that confidence!! What I would give to have a fraction of his confidence!! I could tell Blake was a little nervous once we were seated and waiting for the recital to begin, but he didn't have to be pushed to go perform, he just went to the piano when they called his name and nailed it! We were so proud of him. Brady even said, "BLAKE YOU DID SO GOOD!" *melt my heart*
The recital was held at Glen Eagles Country Club and once it was over there was a little luncheon reception and was so nice. And my little guy who a month earlier said he hated piano and wanted to quit, couldn't resist going back to the piano as the families were finishing eating to play some more. We went back to my parents afterwards and he raced to the piano to play some more. He even tried to "teach" his brother how to play the other day. Pretty cool to see such a transformation in Blake. I'm so proud to be his momma!