Picture books

Lydia has been in a bit of a whiny mood over the past few days as she gets over a slight fever. She’s been wanting to spend time with her best friends on this earth not named Aidan, namely Naomi from upstairs and her mom. When she can’t get access to these people…well let’s say it isn’t a linear progression once you get to position four.

In any case, she has been practicing the piano and is eager to show me what she’s learned. She can read the music and play the notes in her lessons which impresses me because it is more than I can do. Then again she could just be faking it and I would never know. Every now and again she tells me she will play her own music and she in fact does. I won’t go so far as to say she has a gift – after all there are about 100 million other five year olds in china doing the same thing – but I am pretty impressed.

Today Lydia woke up and and made a drawing, it’s below:

Lydia as she is want to do enlisted help with parts of the drawing, this time getting it from Lao Ma. Lydia knows about her father’s drawing ability and will only ask for his help if she is really, really desperate. This drawing tells a story; something to do with a horse, a house, and birds. I didn’t catch it all because Lydia only knew how to tell the story in Chinese. But notice the numbers on the bottom left of the drawing. 11223344… and so on. They are notes on the piano as Lydia set her story to music. When complete she played for us.

Aidan also plays piano and tells stories with pictures. Last week he one a contest of school for best drawing not for his technique per say, but because the story behind his drawing was so elaborate.