I wrote a note to the YaYa list a few minutes ago; and after I sent it, I realized that it's what I wanted to say on my blog today, too. So I'm going to drop it in here.
Linda had sent a note to the list about a project that's coming together in memory of YaYa Debbie's daughter, Jennifer. Linda said she was sorry she'd never had the opportunity to know Jennifer.
Here's my two cents:
Linda, some of us knew Jennifer better than others. As much as I love her mom, Debbie, and her aunt, Kimberly, I think I got to meet Jennifer only once. I love her through the stories they tell.
When I saw your note about this precious YaYa daughter, I thought of a conversation I had with Polly this weekend. It was 17 below in Minneapolis, so she and Claire were having an art day inside in their pjs and sweaters. They had been playing with smackin' acetate all day, and Polly said Claire had great fun with this technique. Polly expressed some concern that they might be breaking the swap rules because the monthly challenge has become a mother/daughter project for them. (Or maybe she thought Claire's efforts might not be sophisticated enough or something.) I told her we'd LOVE to get cards that Claire contributed to.
And here's the kicker. She said Claire looked up from her smackin' and said, "Do you think they'll let me be a YaYa now?"
Oh, my goodness. We've talked about this before, but I feel it stronger than ever now. We need a nickname for our YaYa daughters, with us and remembered, related to us and not, all loved dearly. What can we call our young Yas? How can we encourage them to play with us? And will a day come when we have *gasp* BOY Yas? Wouldn't that be something!
Anyway, I don't want our girls to feel performance anxiety or deadline pressure about swapping. But I'm here to say that if I'm your card recipient this month, and you have a little Ya who wants to stick a crayon card in the envelope with your swap, please please allow it. I will upload it to our gallery and give it a treasured place on my fridge. There's just nothing more precious than our young ones, and we need to love them up all over the place. And we need to call them something way cool.
If you have a suggestion for a nickname for our younger Yas, please share!
2 comments:
how about Yo Yo's? ;) I'll give this some thought...
Maybe we could ask the kids and see what they think. Although if you ask my little Ya, she'll come up with something like Shacka-Do-Do, which was the name she originally gave her new doll for Christmas. (We finally settled on Dolly Rachel, named after her cousin Rachel.) If we don't want a group of little Shacka-Do-Dos running around, maybe we could just ask Claire for her input?
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