Violin lessons and Landlord break-in PART 2

Yesterday we went to violin lessons while Ethne was home sleeping and Aunt Camilla was here finishing up our baking day and left to clean up and freeze the food we made as well as make French Onion Soup for dinner single handed. I felt badly leaving the last up to her but I knew I was leaving it all in good hands.

We had a mishap with emails between the teacher and so I left late and had to book it to get there on time. On the way to violin, Ezra was all tired out and said "The thing I HATE about violin is that I don't like walking there". I knew we were teetering on the edge of a precipice there because living with Ezra is like that. Everything is BORING, everything is TOO HARD, and everything is I am NOT going to do it, I am going to QUIT, and lastly, I don't care WHAT YOU say I am NOT going to. *SIGH**
Often the best thing to do is to ignore these outburst and just keep moving forward happily and hope you rub off on him. 

 When we got there Ezra refused to go first when the teach asked him too and eventually refused to have a lesson. I was so irritated inside but remained calm and coxing outside. To make a very long story short I wasn't any more successful than his teacher so Ezra didn't have a lesson yesterday. So instead the teacher gave me a lesson on the 1/8 size violin which for those of you who know just how tiny that is you realize that is a joke. But when she realized I could play everything that Enoch could play even on the tiny violin she was quite amused and impressed. She gave me compliments and said if I ever wanted to take lessons to let her know because I had talent :) ha ha ha!



So as we left I didn't want to shame Ezra or make things worse so I delicately and respectfully tried to explain that he had just waisted almost $40. I thought because money is one thing that speaks to Ezra he would understand this better than most arguments.  I said Ezra what you just did was like taking $40 and flushing it down the toilet. It's a complete waste and you will never see it again. It's good for absolutely nothing. I brought home the point and then just left it. I walked with him for a long time holding his hand until he decided he didn't want to hold my hand and he fell back a few steps. I just let him. Partly to let him have his moment and partly because I was feeling annoyed with him. After a while he ran and caught back up to me and didn't hold my hand but walked close to me. This was a silent sign that he was trying to get up the courage to apologize and say what was on his mind. I never spoke to him just gave him time. We went in and out of the grocery store and he kept right up by my side until we got closer to home. Finally he said "mom, I am sorry for waisting the money!" I said it's ok Ezra but what are you going to do to make it up? He didn't know so I suggested that he practice twice as hard and do twice as well at his next lesson. He said he didn't want to do twice as well so I said ok well how about this? You work twice as hard practicing this week and then just do the very best you can at your next lesson? He agreed to that and felt better about things.

as it turned out we weren't the only ones having a rough go of it during that time. But that will have to go in the next post...stay tuned... this is really a three part story :)