Piano Recital

So yesterday, May 30th, I had my third piano recital. My first one was a year ago, when I only had 1 student, Summer Castillo. I was able to join my friend Brook Trieber in her piano recital. Brook gave up teaching after that recital to return to the workforce, and I inherited a few of her students, sisters Julia and Amanda North and Jared Debest. I also got two brand new students of my own, Joey Adamson and Elizabeth Hatch. Last November I had another recital, joining with another friend, Jackie Brown. That time I had 4 students play in the recital (the Norths were out of town). Recital number three, I teamed up with Jackie again, and again had 4 students play (Jared stopped taking lessons and Julia was out of town). All of my students did so well. They all had their pieces memorized, had wonderful dynamics and gave very polished performances. I was so proud of them. Here are some pictures I took of that day.

Me and Jackie

All my students

Me and Elizabeth

Me and Amanda

Me and Joey

Me and Summer

The smartest little inchworm

Before I go into the main purpose of this post, let me just give the update that no, we still have not heard back from the school district in Queen Creek. We left a message on Thursday, we'll call back next week. We'll be sure to let everyone know as soon as we know anything.

Now onto the good stuff. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly Jason learns things. Right around the time he turned 6 months, Jason started doing his pre-cursor crawl. Specifically, he was trying to get up on his knees, or he would be pushing himself up so much on his arms that he would get most his belly off the ground. But he wasn't able to get up on his hands and knees at the same time. It would always be one or the other. And usually he would do arms first, then try and get his bum up, only to push himself backwards like a little inchworm stuck in reverse. We took a video of it the first night he really started trying to put the two together (see below). The next morning, he successfully did bum first, then hands, and actually scooted forward a few times, but then he kept reverting to the inchworm in reverse method.

That all lasted just a few days. Then yesterday when we came home from date night, our friends who had been watching Jason asked how long he's been doing that "on the hands and knees and rocking thing". We explained his inchworm movements, and they said he had actually gotten up on all fours and stayed up there and rocked. We were so excited to hear that and anxious to see for ourselves. Then this morning, he gave us what we wanted, and I even got it on camera. In five short days he went from the above video, to the one below. How quickly this guy learns!

Like a weed

Okay, so yesterday Jason turned 6 months old. Here are his month by month pictures just to show you how much he's growing. More photos to be posted later.

Pomp and Circumstance

Friday May 22nd, Dustin graduated from Cal State Fullerton's credential program with a single subject credential to teach Spanish. He had graduated with his Bachelors in Spanish last August and chose not to walk in the commencement ceremonies, but since no cap and gown purchase was required for this graduation, he figured it wouldn't be so bad. So we went. Jason and I had an interesting time sitting about 2/3 of the way back in the non-stadium seating. It was impossible to see anything, and almost impossible to hear which group of credential student they were on. But while they took a LONG time to get through all the multiple subject credential students, Jason entertained all the crowd around us. It never ceases to amaze me just how adorable this kid is, and it feels pretty validating to have complete strangers come up with awe in their eyes and just gush over how beautiful and fun he is. It's good to know I'm not just biased. :-)

Fortunately for me though, most the families of the multiple subject graduates were disrespectful and left once their student was done. It disrupts the ceremony, but it frees up seats closer to the front. So Jason and I were able to sneak up and watch as Dustin got his credential (or at least the folder with CSUF logo on it that is meant to symbolize the actual document which he'll get mailed some time in the future). He had his hands in the air cheering for himself like he had just finished a marathon and took first place. And rightly so. Dustin's schooling has seemed like a marathon; he has been taking classes every semester, even summers, in order to complete. We are so proud of him for finishing this race! Now the next task will be getting a job. We have one district in Queen Creek AZ that he's interviewed twice with, but we're still waiting to hear back from them. Other than that, we're just looking for places to apply. So if you know of a high school needing a VERY well qualified Spanish teacher, give us a holler.

The happy Hemsath family

Jason congratulates Daddy with a kiss.

Dustin and David, a fellow LDS credential student who just got accepted to teach English at the same high school in Queen Creek that Dustin is waiting to hear back from.

Our "Superman" with Amanda and another friend from the credential program.

Jason and Mommy waiting for daddy's name to be called.

After the ceremony we went to celebrate at Outback Steakhouse. It was our friend Ryan's birthday as well, so we got the gang together, and even though we reserved it for 7:30 a few days in advance and showed up early the night of and still weren't seated until 8:30, they gave us some complimentary Bloomin' onions, so we were fine with that. So here we are with the Nielsen, Cox, Sepulveda, Liu and Jacobsen families. Hooray for good friends and good food!

Open Wide

"Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principle one was that they escaped teething."

Mark Twain

While he has yet to cut a tooth, the drool faucet keeps running and anything that finds its way within hands reach is usualy forced into the mouth for some quality gnawing and gumming. I have tons of pictures and videos of things going into Jason's mouth to be chomped on, but I find it funny that none of them are his actual teething toys (of which we have a variety). Moral of the story, if it fits inside his mouth, it is a teething toy. And if it doesn't fit inside his mouth, well, he's still going to try.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

A milestone that I forgot to report, is that a week or so before turning 5 months, Jason started officially sleeping through the night. How do I define sleeping through the night? Being a sleep from the time I go to bed until the time my alarm wakes me up in the morning. Granted, I've made it easier on him to reach that goal by going to bed later than normal, but still, it's been nice to know that once I go to bed, I'm not going to be getting up again in the middle of the night.

Of course, that's generally speaking, because our little love bug is still getting the hang of this whole sleeping through the night thing. The past few days, he's been waking up at 4:45 or 5:50, instead of the normal 6-6:30 range I've come to love and enjoy. Normally, when he wakes up early, we just turn his mobile on, and he goes back to sleep without crying. But that hasn't worked the past few days. Hopefully its just a temporary growth spurt or something, because as I battle to not let my sore throat and minor congestion get out of control, these attacks on the sleep I was just getting used to having again have left me utterly fatigued.

As for Jason, he is just a bundle of joy. Lately, the nap he's supposed to take when I come home from work, has not been going well. He'll either cry and cry, or as is more common for him as of late, he'll just stay in his crib squealing and babbling and rolling around. Sometimes it's just so cute, he's just so awake and eager to play, that we take him out and play with him (see video). Although I think he doesn't realize how tired he really is, because in his eagerness to play, he'll often jump himself to sleep (he's done so on 4 occasions now. Below are pictures of two times he's done it)