Carmen's Christmas piano recital

The week before this recital, Carmen told me she might play something other than the Bach Prelude in C that I'd taught her in the fall (she knew all but 2 measures when we went to her Halloween recital).

I told her that was not an option. I did not explain that no one was interested in hearing her play a simple thing she could easily learn in one piano lesson (things she's supposed to be using to learn to read music). So at her lesson the week of the recital, she let Ms. Jeter teach her the last two measures.

When I got home that day, I found out that Ms. Jeter was planning to pedal for Carmen. I thought this was strange, because Carmen had been pedaling herself all along (I had not taught her that--she had figured that out by ear, like everything else).

I think she must have tried to use that as another excuse not to play the piece for her recital because she was nervous about it. Another day a week or two before that, she told Ms. Jeter she had thrown up in school that day. I was very concerned when Ms. Jeter called and told me that since the school hadn't contacted me. But later that day, through talking to Jackie and then Carmen, we figured out that she must've made that up because she didn't feel like playing or having the lesson.

All of this to say, we didn't invite people to the recital. I told Mom about it, and she came, but because we weren't sure until the last week whether she would in fact play, I didn't invite anyone else. Besides, it's such a busy time of year to ask anyone to come to an hour-long recital to hear our 7 year old play one 2-minute song. (But we were thankful to have Gigi there, since David was shooting video and I was shooting stills! Gabe was perfect and Paloma behaved like an angel, but it was nap time, so it was perfect to have a good lap for a nap!)
Anyway, now you can hear Carmen. This is the first video I've ever uploaded to Blogger and it took David's help and several hours to do so! So there won't be many of these unless it gets a lot easier!

Carmen was visibly nervous from the time we got there. She refused when I asked her to sit at the piano to take her picture before the recital (though David was able to get her to pose), and when she played, she did so much more quickly than usual (except for the newly-learned last 2 measures).

A week later, we told her on the morning of her last lesson that it would be her last lesson for now. We've been frustrated that Carmen has shown NO interest in learning to read music after over a year in lessons, and financially, it's difficult to keep adding on activity after activity. She enjoys playing by ear and she enjoys the one-on-one attention she gets when Ms. Jeter listens to her. But David & I have tried to explain to her that if she learned to read the music, it would open up whole new worlds for her like learning to read words did years ago.

She was upset and went to school and told her classmates that I was making her quit piano. (I found this out when her friend asked me, "Why are you making Carmen quit piano?" in front of the whole class.) That night we counseled her again about it, and we reassured her we don't want her to quit piano. We want her to take an interest in learning to read music.

We will see!

A few days after her last lesson, we found this note in her spiral on the piano (I wished I had scanned this before Carmen used it to make a list of songs she assigned herself):
We have the same hope!