Beefy & Babies

I just wanted to let everyone know that we are still awaiting Baby #3, due the last week of January.  I am starting to get anxious, excited, cranky, and more than a little tired.  But I know that it will be over all too soon, and then it will really get crazy around here.  We can’t wait!

32 weeks:

35 weeks:

38 weeks:

Lucy and Mercer are excited to meet their new baby sister!  We are pretty sure it is a girl, but not 100%, so we will let you all know when the baby is born.

Today we are looking at just about 10 more weeks until baby #3 arrives!  We are all so excited and can’t wait to meet the new little one (although I wouldn’t mind having the closets all organized and cleaned and the freezer full of ready-to-serve meals before the baby comes).

Thanks, Daniela, for taking fabulous photos to post.

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Lucy has been taking kinderdoodle art classes from my good friend, Daniela, and she really loves them.  So, I decided to try a little art time at home yesterday.  We tried this tip to improve our artistic time, and it really helped out a lot (especially since it was starting to get windy too).  Mercer really loves the idea of watercolors, but he only made one masterpiece (shown in pictures), while Lucy made at least six in the same amount of time.  She was very excited about this special time and is very serious about her painting.  She wanted me to take pictures of all the brushes, but I told her one brush picture was good (last picture).  In case you are wondering why I am making such a big deal about watercoloring outside with the kids, let me just tell you that I am one of the most un-crafty and un-artistic moms that I know.  So, I am trying to make an effort to get more art in our day.

This week is 20 weeks for me and baby #3.  We had our ultrasound on Tuesday and got a peak at the new little one.  Everything is going well, and we are healthy and on track for a delivery sometime during the last week of January.

I’m starting to feel like I am getting bigger, but I wanted to make sure to document this stage.  So, in a few more months when I am really feeling huge, I can look back and know that it all passes so quickly and not to stress about it.

And just in case you just want to see pictures of the kids, here are a couple.  My friend, Emily, just opened her own studio for her musical activity classes, so we went to the grand opening to play.  Lucy and Mercer love this place and absolutely love taking classes there.  My other friend, Ellen, was there to take pictures, and got these great shots of them playing.  Thanks so much, Emily and Ellen!

A quick follow-up to my previous post about the kid’s songbook idea.  After a little more searching, I found this site which has quite an extensive collection of children’s songs with piano music and complete lyrics, all for free download:

http://gmajormusictheory.org/

Specifically, there is a section of the site dedicated to “sing-along songs”:

http://gmajormusictheory.org/Freebies/Sing.html

So, for personal use, this is a really good find.  You can download the music, print it out, and play it at home, all free of charge.

I contacted the maintainer of the site, Gilbert, who is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, about my idea of creating a book out of all the pieces on the site.  He was very friendly and courteous in his response, but unfortunately he preferred that I not create a book for general distribution.  So, not a complete victory for the “Free as in Freedom” idea that I started with, but still a good website.  Aside from the kid’s songs that were my initial goal, Gilbert has a lot of good music theory resources on his website.

I am still thinking about the possibility of trying to put together a few pieces on my own, so we’ll see…  Usually those types of projects are “oh, that would be nice to do”, but never get all the way to the top of the priority list.

Hello all, I know this is officially Rosemary’s place to blog, but sometimes I get the blogging “itch” too, and I don’t feel like setting up my own…  I’ll try to keep it family-oriented, kid-friendly, non-nerdy, etc.

I have an idea for a kid-related project, and am looking for input from you, the loyal readers of our sporadic blog.  I think it would be fun to have a collection of children’s songs to play on the piano and/or guitar.  I already have “Hokey Pokey” committed to memory, but it is getting a little old, so time to add some more tunes to the repertoire…  So, since the internet is the great idea-sharing place that it is, I searched for “free children’s sheet music”, but what I found was a little disappointing.  How is it that I can’t find a non-copyrighted version of “Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star” to download?

On the subject of copyright-free music, I am a big fan of these sites, in case you haven’t heard of them:

• Mutopia – a site dedicated to the distribution of high-quality free printable sheet music (mostly classical music)
• IMSLP – the International Music Score Library Project – a site dedicated to distribution of scanned versions of out-of-copyright music (again mostly classical)

So, my idea is in the same spirit as these sites, and perhaps if the project is completed I can even upload the resulting pieces or complete book to Mutopia so that other people can use it as well.  The main questions to answer regarding the project are:

1. How do you determine if the tune to a nursery rhyme is under copyright?  For instance, if I want to make sheet music for “Three Blind Mice” and distribute it freely, is that okay?  Does someone actually have a copyright on something that seems so universal?  How long have nursery rhymes been around?  All of my life at least, but I know that copyright is something like 70 years past the death of a composer, or something along those lines.  So, this legal question needs to be researched.
2. What “level” of sheet music are we going for here?  I think that something with the basic tune as the right hand (in piano speak) with a simple left hand bass line would be good.  Nothing too fancy, but not too simple either.  Most of the music I have run across so far has been right hand only, which to me is a little boring.  It would be good if the songs could be picked by “average” piano players (which is what I would consider myself to be — took lessons for a few years, but am not about to be performing for audiences anytime soon…).
3. What songs should be included?  I would like to include a good selection of widely known songs, and I am sure that the list could get pretty long.  Perhaps it is worth listing what will not be included: Disney songs (since they are probably still under copyright), other “modern” movie and/or TV show theme songs, any other songs still under copyright.  I was about to say “no church songs”, but then I thought why not?  A lot of Sunday School songs are great for kids (Lucy really likes them, I know), and they are songs that I would be happy for my kids to sing.  If hurts some anti-God person’s feelings, tough luck.  Back to the point, if anyone has specific ideas of songs that would be good, please do leave a comment with suggestions.
4. What instruments should be included?  I would think that piano (melody and bass) is a clear choice, with lyrics of course, and also guitar chords would be good.  One of the nice things about the whole non-copyright idea is that if someone wants to transpose or otherwise adapt the music for another instrument (or group of instruments), they are free to do so.
5. Where do we get the actual music?  If an out-of-copyright printed version of a song can be found, that seems ideal.  If not, it seems like fair game for me to just figure out the basic tune by ear, come up with a bass line, and then put that into sheet music form.  It would be a fun little composing challenge.  I am planning on typesetting the music myself with Lilypond, which I have already done a few pieces with.  So, the end product would be a PDF book that people can download and print.

What do you think?  Would such a collection of “classic” children’s songs be of interest to many people?  Or should I just forget this silly idea and go buy a pre-printed book for $12, with little copyright symbols next to all of these commonly known tunes?  For some reason, the idea of this Free as in Freedom Kid’s Song Book seems like fun to me…

We hope all of you are doing well.  Our kids are doing well and the new baby is still on schedule for a late January arrival.  Maybe I’ll convince Rosemary to do an update blog with adorable kid pictures (since they are always adorable) sometime soon.

…baby #3 (or as Lucy and Mercer refer to it, baby “Jack-Jack”) at the end of January 2010.  We are all excited and hoping for inspiration with names, so that it doesn’t end up with a Disney character name.

Okay, we are bad bloggers, but apparently everyone else is too, so we’re not feeling too guilty.  We have done a lot since the last blog post, including get a sweet new minivan, plant some things in the back yard, go to San Diego for Rachael’s wedding, and start potty-training Mercer.  So, life is busy but good.  Mercer is growing up so fast, so we decided it was a good time for him to get a tattoo!  We went to a 4th of July swim party where there were a lot of these patriotic temporary tattoos that the kids liked a lot.

The kids had a great time in San Diego with their cousins.

In other online content news, we set up an image gallery site for our friend Eric, who lives in Alaska and does all kinds of extreme activities.  Take a look at his photos for some great pictures from a climb he recently did on Denali.  We don’t do these kinds of life-risking treks, so we have to get our outdoor activity excitement vicariously through Eric’s life.