Working Girl/Mom

For the next two weeks, I am doing some accompanying for Mr. Smith, a local instrumental teacher. I'm playing for his high school students' solo festival this coming weekend, and I'm rehearsing with them for two weeks. I played for them last year, and I agreed to do it again this year because the kids are pretty great. I am taking the baby with me to the rehearsals at the teacher's home. Tuesday, the first rehearsal day, didn't go very well. Poor Gunner was having a bad day, and he did not appreciate being suddenly awoken from his nice carseat nap to a loud piano/clarinet duet. Turns out, he doesn't really enjoy the sound of the clarinet all that much. He couldn't sleep through it, and he was so tired that he screamed the entire hour and half I was there. We both returned home exhausted and irritable, and I was regretting my decision to do this tiny bit of work because it seemed so bad for the baby.

Mr. Smith hired a babysitter for Thursday's rehearsal, and the whole thing went much better. The baby had a better day in general, and he was very well-behaved for the sitter. Plus, since I was in the other room, I could hop on back between kids and feed him, rock him, or change him. It was so much better! The one downside was that the babysitter wasn't very interactive. When he fussed, she would just sit there, staring at the TV. I'm sure it's just because I'm his mom, but I know what he wanted when he was fussing, and she wasn't doing anything to help him solve his problems. She wouldn't rock him, or interact with him in any way. After I fed him and he took a nap, he just wanted to be played with, and she wouldn't even do that.

I am happy to help Mr. Smith out with the festival. I'm happy to see the kids again, and it is nice to be playing for something again. Accompanying these kids is fun because they work hard, they're talented, and I get to do a bit of teaching and coaching them as to how to play in an ensemble. However, I am so grateful that I am not a full-time working mom. I know people who do it, and love it, and are so good at this type of multi-tasking, and I admire them for all they do at work and for their kids. But I am grateful that Spiff makes it possible for me to stay home, even though we are living on a student's loan budget. I wouldn't make a good working mom...at least to a little baby.

This Friday is the festival, and Spiff is taking the afternoon off to stay home with Gunner. I will be gone for long enough that I will miss a feeding, and so we have been working on getting Gunner to take a bottle. He doesn't like it at all, and we can only get him to eat by feeding him out of a medicine spoon. It's actually pretty amusing to watch him as he realizes that the stuff dribbling into his mouth is actually food.

And for the record, Gunner seems to have gotten used to the piano, and I have been able to effectively practice with him by my side several times. My performance of Clair de Lune at the church function last weekend went okay, after I got over my initial nerves. He has also allowed me to do several hours of practicing. I'm sure we'll go through another entirely different phase of the baby/practicing relationship once he gets mobile.