A-Drumming We Will Go!

It's been a long week, ending with a drive home in tears today. There was a huge traffic pileup, making the usual commute into an hour and a half of achy back pain, accompanied by increasing internal drama as my mental state deteriorated from self-recrimination, hostile thoughts, re-thinking every major decision I've made in my life, fierce anger at any and all who have dared threaten my family – real or imaginary, to finally arriving home, eating dinner, napping, and then not-so-surprisingly feeling much better.

So, I guess it's good that the Parent Bloggers are hosting a nice positive theme for a blog blast today in conjunction with Jenifer Fox's new book, "Your Child's Strengths." Y'all won't have to suffer my temper.

Oh boy, a chance to talk about Q's strengths! As any fond parent would say, there certainly are plenty, but I'm going to pick rhythm for this post. Even as a pre-walker, we thought he bounced in time to the music.

His drumming has become darn good for an almost-three. He can keep time in whole notes with one hand while tapping out quarter notes with the other. He adds drum fills at the correct time in the music – those big splashy solo bits right on the ends of phrases. He watches Buddy Rich and other big band legends that we locate on YouTube and inspects their technique, showing us new skills the very next time he plays.

I love seeing how he can look at any object and decide how it could be an instrument. His round blue table has been designated a "tympani" because of its large size. Smaller stools are his snare drums. Longish items are guitars. Long live imagination!