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I brought Dwight (my accordion) to our Music Together class yesterday. I had worked up simple arrangements of three songs from the current songbook, and accompanied the class while they sang and danced. (I sang along where possible too, but was thinking too hard most of the time.) It was so much fun, I'm looking forward to doing it again sometime. I also want to bring the uke in at some point.

After class we went to Verizon Wireless to look at the new Droid, which Laura went ahead and bought. (I'm officially jealous. I love my Samsung Flipshot, but man is that thing sexy.) The kids entertained the sales guys by pretending to talk on the dummy model phones throughout the store. One of the guys went in back and got a couple of discontinued models, and gave them to the kids as toys. They were so proud. They've been making pretend phonecalls on them ever since.

Then, next door to Verizon is a Tae Kwon Do school, and they were celebrating their fourth anniversary with free food, demonstrations, a bounce house, and cake. The kids had a ball and wore themselves out. Riley was imitating the demonstrators, kicking and shouting an approximation of "hyah!" We got to thinking about how martial arts would teach a lot of the things that Riley needs most: confidence, discipline, focus. We spoke with the manager, and she was very supportive, saying they work with special needs kids all the time. She set Riley up with an instructor -- a teenage boy who surprised us by being really good with Riley. We signed Riley up for classes. He seems excited about it, we're hopeful he'll participate well.

(Of course, as I typed this he was screaming his lungs out, in protest of being sent to "quiet time" for having screamed about having to wear non-preferred underwear because he wet his Spongebob ones. So we shall see. Rome wasn't built in a day and so on.)

Every night before bed, I sing lullabyes to Lydia for a bit. She recently started singing them right along with me. We do three songs, and Edelweiss is the grand finale every night.

(Apologies to Facebook people who've seen it already.)

We moved to Fayetteville, GA this week. The house is bigger and nicer than our last one, though it too is a rental. Lots of storage, a screened-in back porch, and access to community perks like a swimming pool and tennis courts. The only downsides are an increase in yard maintenance, and an allegedly fascist neighborhood association which is ever vigilant for infractions of yard maintenance guidelines. But our kitchen sink alone is probably worth this sacrifice.

We got here Sunday night, and spent a couple days camping here and getting the essentials in place. Movers brought the rest of our stuff on Wednesday. It was the easiest move I've had by far.

There was a newspaper in our driveway that evening, and I brought it into the house and looked through it. In it I found a classified ad seeking a keyboard player for "an established southern rock/blues band." I called them yesterday, having finally gotten the boxes down to ankle level. I figured even if nothing else came of it, I could pick their brains about resources for musicians down here. They invited me and the family out to the lead singer's house this evening for band practice and a cookout.

It was great fun, even though I wasn't yet able to play along with most of their songs. And even though I have a lot of practicing to do before I know the songs as well as they do, they're willing to give me the chance to get up to speed. Everything they played tonight is a cover, but the songs are good and fun to play. They get some gigs but aren't very aggressive about it -- they all have day jobs -- which suits me and my Dad-of-young-kids schedule just fine. The band's name is Remedy. They play pretty well together, I'd say.

Downtown Fayetteville seems to be precisely one major intersection. Most of the rest of it is tucked away behind the trees, off little roads; the vibe is a bit isolating. I'm glad to be making some friends already.

It had been been ages since I've gotten together with my neighbor Jeremy to jam, but he came by yesterday afternoon. He didn't have time to play, but asked me if I would be free that night. We ended up going to his friend Dylan's house, the one with the sound booth and recording setup in his basement. A few hours later, we had a rough demo of one of Jeremy's songs. I'm not even sure the song has a name yet, I've only heard him call it "that banjo song."

He put down the banjo part first, then I did accordion. Nothing fancy, just simple backup chords, but it still filled out the sound nicely. I was a little rusty, and had to think too hard about playing. I need practice, and also confidence to play it more decisively. But it was good enough for this. Then Jeremy sang lead vocals, and Dylan threw down a quick and dirty bass part. Jeremy and I each sang some harmony on the chorus, and then I even recorded a ukulele track if you can believe it. Dylan'll be mixing it some more, but it sounded pretty cool already when we called it a night. It was quite a trip to hear us that way.

Jeremy is wanting to do a disc of seven or so songs, and take them around town to get us some live gigs. I'm a little worried that it'll sound too different than we do live, but we've got a while to worry about that. But even if nothing else comes of it, we'll have a record and some good memories.

aliste, we got the hat you made for Lydia. Thank you so much! It is adorable. I'll take a photo of her in it tomorrow to show you.

We're pretty settled into our new house in Knoxville. It's a ranch style, which is much easier on Riley. (He can manage stairs just fine, but when he gets whiny he'll insist on being carried up or down, and when we can't do that we get the total meltdown. A lack of stairs neatly sidesteps the whole problem.) It's got a garage, and more storage in general than our old house did. It's pretty centrally located, but Knoxville is sprawled, so we're still spending more time in the car than we did in Durham.

Plus ça change... Our days are much like they were in Durham just before we left: we're at home a lot, just trying to get through the day. We're getting a lot of support from Laura's mom and stepdad, though, and I'm feeling the benefit of that. I have felt a little isolated sometimes, only knowing about seven people in town besides Laura and the kids. And since all of those people are Laura's family, I'm always something of an adjunct, just by definition (not by any kind of unfriendliness or anything, it's just how it is).

But today I met some neighbors and had a great time. This afternoon Riley and I went over to our neighbor Jeremy's house so that I could jam with him on accordion. He plays guitar, mandolin, banjo, keyboards, and a few other things. He's quite a character, extremely friendly and open-minded. I accompanied his guitar and singing with just some really basic legato chords, but it sounded pretty good with the mostly folky songs he played. It was so much fun! He wants to work up a setlist and get some gigs with me. It worked pretty well today, I'm very encouraged. I'll be able to fill out the accordion part better once I know the songs, of course, so I'm really looking forward to practicing some more. Now to find the time -- and the real trick will be finding some when the practicing won't wake anybody up.