well, sort of new ( to us ). if you follow along on twitter you already know the piano arrived a month ago and then we took the trip to the u.p. and now i’ve gotten myself so far behind in storytelling, i don’t know if i’ll ever catch up 🙂

the piano was given to its previous owners on the condition that they give it away when the time came which happened to coincide with when we were looking for a piano. it’s hard to imagine, but i suppose if we ever decide to become piano-less, we’ll give it away as well.

we’re lucky enough to have a capable piano tuner in the area and he came by and quickly fixed some broken hammers and gave it a initial tuning. after the piano has "rested" for a bit, we’ll get ivory on a few keys replaced and have the final tuning done.

as with everything else, he’s a quick study and has already taken to practicing major third harmonic intervals and little melodies. he says he’s interested in having an occasional 15 or 20 minute lesson and we’ve found a local teacher trained in the suzuki method who has agreed try a few lessons to see if he finds them agreeable.

if so, great and if not, that’s great too – i’ll just have that much more time to practice my family holiday piano sing along songs.

today we went to gigi’s house to give odin a chance to meet some members of his extended family.

although he occasionally shows a shy side of his personality, today he was quite happy to have new friends to play with and quickly did his best to impress upon his cousin richelle just how strong he’s been getting!

odin and his cousin amanda play with the same fisher price toy phone that everyone remembers playing with as a child. there was a copyright notice on the bottom of the phone that was dated “1961” so it might even be that odin is playing with a toy that grandpa eric kicked around as a young lad ( although he probably was already a little too old for such a child’s toy 🙂 ).

odin’s birthday is rapidly approaching but we were still surprised to find that his aunt valerie had brought him his very first birthday present.of course, we couldn’t wait a week to open it!

if you look close you’ll see it’s a shirt from her hometown, old orchard beach, which is a popular summer spot with vacationers throughout new england.

thanks!

while odin has been practicing pounding the keys for quite some time, today he had his first official piano lesson from his great aunt ginny and aunt valerie on the piano at gigi’s house that generations of young musicians used to learn the fundamental of music theory.

great aunt ginny’s hands are on the left and aunt valerie’s hand is on the right.

as he is known to do, odin first sits back and watches intently as they play a familiar tune and after awhile decides that he wants to join in the fun!

great aunt ginny continues the tutelage as he continues to study her hand movements very closely.

after awhile odin decides that it’s time for him to join in the fun!

i’m impressed at how quickly he adjusts his hands, showing off an extraordinarily adept left hand technique.

it almost looks like he and great aunt ginny are ready to perform a duet!

a photograph proving that odin’s great aunt ginny has been giving piano lessons for a long, long, long time 🙂

she’s seen giving auntie m what might have been her very first lesson on the very same piano she used for odin’s first lesson!