Learning to do stuff

Imogen has this fabulous determination to learn things. Her piano teacher gave her a difficult (for her) piece recently. The music covered two pages (one side each page) and must be played with both hands, switching back and forth often. She was expected to know the first line and a half the first week. She had some kind of mental block on this music and it was very frustrating. She cried, she stomped around in frustration, she made me promise that she didn't have to play it at the recital if she hadn't learned it in time. It took two weeks to learn the first section, but after that the rest of the song has been easy for her.

Whistling was the same way. She's wanted to whistle for months. She's puckered up her lips and squeeked as high as she could to imitate the sound of whistling. She cried about it. She tried to get me to commit to an age when she would magically be able to whistle. And finally, within the last few weeks, she actually learned to whistle, a real genuine whistle.

Incidentally, a couple days later, Genevieve learned to whistle as well. That's Genevieve: two days later, eighteen months earlier.

Imogen's next project is learning how to snap. She keeps track of which of her classmates can snap their fingers (or have convinced her that they can snap their fingers). Sometimes she comes home and tells me that her classmates' older siblings can snap as if this is some kind of evidence that she is failing dreadfully to do something that obviously a multitude of people can do.

She's got a bit of a competative streak.