Guitar hero

Before Andrew and I knew each other, he was trying to learn guitar. He owns both an acoustic and an electric guitar and used to take lessons. Then I came along and he got a little distracted, to say the least.

After we got a little water in our basement over the winter, we moved the guitars upstairs and under the bed in our bedroom. A couple of months ago, trying to keep Maddie entertained one afternoon, Andrew pulled them out and started showing them to her. They're horribly out of tune, and all the sheet music is stored away someplace so he can't play any songs. Nevertheless, as you can imagine, Maddie was 100% fascinated.

Now whenever she remembers them, she demands that Andrew pull out the "tar." Yesterday, about a half hour before bedtime, Maddie and I were reading a Dora the Explorer book called When I Grow Up, featuring scenes of different things Dora and her friends want to be (firefighters, teachers, archaeologists). In one scene, Dora was on a dude ranch. We looked at the horses, the cows, the cacti, the turtles. Then Maddie noticed that Dora was sitting by the campfire playing a guitar.

She immediately leaped off the couch and headed into the bedroom (where Andrew was resting), chanting "Daddy. Tar. Daddy! Tar! Tar!" With this kid, there's no putting her off; once her mind is made up, that's it. So Daddy dragged out the "tar." I recently found his electric tuner and replaced the battery, and he began to tune it while Maddie helped. In the meantime, Maddie discovered the pitch pipe in the guitar case and learned how to blow into it.

I always wonder if we'll look back someday, when Maddie chooses her calling in life, and remember moments like these -- her early fascination with the guitar that led her to choose music as a career, maybe. Of course, I also believe she's going to have a future in gymnastics: the other day I laid out a bunch of tiny wooden blocks all in a row, and she grabbed my hand, hoisted herself up on them with one foot, and put one foot in front of the other as she walked across them like a balance beam!