Friday, September 25, 2009

Mila and Drew 9/09

Communication expands. The first laughs have been shared, and a lifelong relationship forged. Simply amazing. Drew rolled from his belly to his back all by himself today! Also gaining great upper body control, new vocal sounds. To the tune of "Every Time" (Dubble8).

Friday, September 18, 2009

Art For Free Children (Prelude)
















I hope that everyone can excuse my lengthy absence from this blog. The past several weeks have been fairly crazy for me in my extra-parental professional world. I started my Sound I class at MICA, while the opening of Mobtown Modern's third concert season led me to create a documentary podcast on loop-based music, complete a composition for the opening concert (for myself to perform on 6 different instruments, using software that I had never before used live), to coordinate a collaboration between two composer friends for a separate MM event ("Music By Fax" at the Contemporary Museum) - also requiring that I prepare audio samples and create several beats for the occasion, edit video from said event, and coordinate the guest lecture at MICA of the wonderful composer/violinist Todd Reynolds, to rehearse and conduct an ensemble arrangement of 3 hip-hop instrumentals, and (oh yeah) perform by one-man-band composition. Great pre-concert article in Baltimore's City Paper, top of the music section. I am somewhat dreading the probable review of my piece by our esteemed Baltimore Sun critic Tim Smith, but OK, now I can breathe.

So, did I mention that Mila and Drew and I will be starting something of an informal homeschooling program? We have a new babysitting exchange set up with our friends Paul and Joanna, with their kids Charlotte and June. Since Paul is also a stay-at-home dad, we are working out plans for something of a weekly schedule. A big part of this is going to be a kids-and-parents art/music/storytelling class that I am organizing at the Baltimore Free School- OPENING DOWNSTAIRS FROM US NEXT WEEK! I am very excited for this, and very happy to have some guidance from my mom- a master of early childhood education. Tuesday will be our first day. We're going to have the class on Tuesday and Friday mornings, with (hopefully) parents taking turns bringing materials.

Marie will be teaching a babywearing class at the Free School as well. She has been looking forward to doing workshops again, since the closing of our favorite independent kids' store, Bediboo in Lauraville, which used to host Marie's workshops last year. To summarize, we're pretty psyched about where we live and the school downstairs.

In other news, Drew got his first haircut! Mila has relented in her requests to go to the barber, for which Marie is happy.

"Let's do tricks with bricks and blocks, sir." -- Dr. Seuss