little virtuoso

Today we went over to Leila‘s house so that Jonah could see a violin in real life. He’s played his little quilted violin from the “V” pocket in his wall hanging. We’ve all played that violin for him. “Wai-yo-le-innnnnn.” He convinced one of the caregivers at mom-toddler yoga to play a wooden spoon as a violin for ages. While visiting my parents in L.A. he became entranced with a pair of violin lapel pins my mother has: “Tai-neee Wai-yo-le-innse.”

Needless to say he was quite impressed with the real thing. Leila played his favorite songs (Old MacDonald, BINGO, The Itsy Bitsy Spider). And Leila’s husband David brought out a number of guitars that he — and we — played. (“STRUM!”).

And then, a little while later, I put him on the bench in front of the piano (“Been-an-oh”).

He was astonishingly deliberate, delicate, and focused as he played. One finger at a time, in a well-spaced choice of keys, with very good timing. It sounded like he was composing a song. A simple song, but still. He scooted himself to either end of the piano bench in order to play in the different ranges. After a while, he got down off the bench but soon he wanted back up.

“All done, chair!” he said, twice. To me. Because what he means is — Your turn with the piano bench is over. Get out, I need it now.

(He used a similar tactic this morning with Scott, who was emailing on the laptop while hanging with Jonah in the nursery. “All done, Pyou-Ter,” he said.)

I put him back up on the bench and he dove right back in. I have a feeling we’re going to be visiting the piano at Leila’s a lot in the future.

Unfortunately, my camera phone’s memory was almost full, so I only have this tiny snippet to share:

To make up for that, and just for fun, here’s a video of Jonah walking and me trying to convince him to dance again because his dancing was so cute and that’s why I took the camera out in the first place but he kept tripping over stuff instead. And, not to spoil it, but the clip ends with a request for frozen mango. Totally worth waiting for.