As an early birthday gift, my parents got us a stereo for the van that can play CDs and Steve expertly installed this over the weekend. I have been absolutely starving for classical music, in particular, so that the kids can listen to many great works and get familiar with them. On Monday, we started with Beethoven's 9th- the first two movements on the way in to school seemed to have them all calm and listening intently (happily they were really into it). Then, on the way back we listened to the next two movements including the famous last movement with the "Ode to Joy" theme. You would not believe how all four of them were singing at the top of their lungs (their unborn sister was either also excited, or terrified by this, b/c I could feel her thrashing around to the music also). They were truly beaming with happiness, all four of them! Tuesday we listened to Mozart in the morning and Prokofiev in the afternoon. I think Prokofiev was too much for them and gave them complete sensory overload and fighting ensued- but the same pieces worked very well to rev them up for the day this morning.
I was talking to Steve the other night about this great article in my favorite magazine, "The Week". The article was about the Dali Lama, and I was relaying the story to Steve. Valerie was there in the kitchen with us, listening. At the end of the story, a waitress asks the Dali Lama "What is the meaning of life?" and he quickly answers "Happiness!". And Valerie chimed in, "Of course it is!", as if that was a silly question. And I realized, our children truly do live like that- for pure happiness, in all that they do. It made me realize again how much we can learn from them.
Here is a video of Livy, talking about Tornados:
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