The piano

Growing up my father always stressed sports for my brother and I, which we took to pretty quickly. Soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter, baseball in the spring, and swim team in the summer. We loved it. It kept us in shape, we learned all the life lessons sports are supposed to teach, and made a fair amount of friends as well.

My mother always enjoyed seeing us happy and I am sure agreed with a lot of what playing sports taught us, but at the same time wished we were more musically inclined and saw a  reasonable amount of benefit to my brother and I both learning an instrument, which again she was probably correct about. The problem was neither my brother or I really had any interest in learning one, but mom insisted and so after trying a few different instruments I finally settled on the clarinet ( I am pretty sure this is why my brother also ended up with the clarinet seeing as we already had one..)

I barely practiced showed a little but not much aptitude for it and really just kind of pushed through those three years of band, and as soon as I was able I dropped it.

Now after however many years later, and a rather exhausting 45 minutes last night there is an upright piano in our living room. Neil has a little experience and plays 'house piano' as he puts it. I have no idea what I am doing, but Kiki is in love with it. She is the real reason we ended up spending a couple months looking on craigslist till we found a free piano we could call our own. And now after the however many years followed by the exhausting 45 minutes Kiki now has a piano and Nonna has her little musician.

So here are a few more pictures of the littles at the piano for Nonna.