Nikki and the guitar

Nikki and Lukas were bored one day, well pretty much everyday. If they don't have anything to do for five minutes they decide it's time to bug dad until he yells. SO, the other day Nikki was flipping through Netflix and she wanted to watch the Katy Perry documentary. I thought about it for a minute while it was loading (I initially said yes) but then I told her it probably isn't a good show for her to watch (She is only 7 and I don't think we need to sexualize our kids any earlier). 

So for an alternative (she still wanted to watch a music show) we turned on Taylor Swift documentary. The other option was the Justin Bieber movie or Spice World, both of which will make anyone vomit (trust me, I sat through all of spice world as a teenager, and I refuse to let Nikki watch Justin Bieber, or Barney). Within five minutes Nikki starts asking questions, such as "Is she famous? Is she really playing that guitar, did she write all those songs? How much money does she make?"  You see Nikki has this fascination with being famous. She really, REALLY wants to be famous. I'm not sure if it's just famous but I think she wants to be rich as well.  Yeah I know, I have some work cut out for me as a father to teach her the truth about happiness, but this thing got her interested in music. She asked about guitars, because she saw Ms Taylor Swift playing the guitar, a sparkly one. I told her that I had one (not a sparkly one, just a regular guitar) and from then on there was no quiet in the house. Every five minutes she kept asking me to go to the storage unit and get the guitar. Lukas didn't know what she was talking about, but when I finally brought home the guitar, he understood, and wanted one too.

Then she wanted to learn how to play the guitar. Strike that. She didn't want to learn, she just wanted to play it. When I started to teach her about the basics of the guitar, like frets, strings, and how to hold the thing, she just said "No dad, I just want to learn how to play the guitar, I don't need all this."  Well sorry. 

I think that she had this idea that by just holding the guitar she would magically transform into a Taylor Swift-esque superstar without doing any work whatsoever. She was mistaken. I tried and I tried and she finally just took the guitar in her room to learn by herself to play. 

Today (Sunday, three days later) she came to me and wanted to learn. The novelty had worn off a little bit, and she realized that in order to make something sound good, she needed to learn something. It's like on Bill and Ted's Excellent adventure at the very end when the Wild Stallions are trying to decide how to get better. "Maybe it's time we get Eddie Van Halen?-Bill, Maybe It's time we learned how to play?-Ted." Both nod heads. Touching moment really. So today I taught her the strings, frets, and the first little bit of Mary had a little lamb. She's getting there, and she plays everything by ear (like her dad) but she is really getting interested in Music. If it keeps up Kara and I have talked about getting her lessons and a guitar that actually fits her (she has to play this one hawaiian style). 

I did look up how much a sparkly guitar was, and I think I'm just going to take the one that we have and get some glue and sparkles. Much easier.

So if any of you know any guitar teachers in the area, please let me know.