We in the Leatherman household measure our excitement for the upcoming days by the number of consecutive stay-at-home days the kids have. A stay-at-home day is one where at least one of us (Dan or I) doesn’t have to go to work and where the kids don’t have go to school. The typical week has 2 stay-at-home days, known to most people as “the weekend.” It is not uncommon for a week to have 3 stay-at-home days either because Monday is a holiday or I take a random Friday off for one reason or another.
Imagine the excited anticipation we had mid-December when I announced the number of consecutive stay-at-home days we were to have to close out the year. An unprecedented 11! Our prior record was 7 which we realized twice over the summer (once for our Denver vacation and another time for our early-August “staycation” where we just did local things as a family). 11 was something to talk about well in advance of actually living it starting on December 22nd.
For me, our 11 stay-at-home days were absolutely wonderful, not without patience-testing moments but full of smiles, growth, play and genuine excitement. I went into them looking forward to the days off but dreading the fights I was sure were ahead of me; I left them more in love with my kids than ever and believing, perhaps naively, that we’ve turned a corner with some of their behavior issues.
Originally planned for one post, my holiday recap is taking me entirely too long to put together; so I’ve adjusted my approach and plan to share 11 highlights from our 11 stay-at-home days over the course of the next 11 days. One post per day for 11 days! With this approach, I think the recap will be more readable and less of a time commitment for anyone reading it. It’ll also give me some contingency when I do fail to deliver two posts a few weeks (which is surely to happen) in my quest for 100 posts for the year.
So let this post be the kick-off of the recap of the “The 11 Stay-At-Home Days of the Leatherman Christmas.”
On the first stay-at-home day of the Leatherman Christmas, we have Ella saying “Ya Ya do it self.”
I don’t know how many times I tried to put on Ella’s pants and shoes or respond to her request for water or a torn page from our Rudolph coloring book only to be met with a strong insistence that Ella do it herself. “Ya Ya do it self,” she’d say. With 11 stay-at-home days and no big plans to be anywhere during them, I typically obliged her stubborn insistence only to find that Ya Ya either couldn’t do it herself or would undo what she did immediately after successfully doing it.
With pants... we actually did get out of jammies and into clothes every day over the course of our 11 stay-at-home days. More often than not, when I’d go to put Ella’s pants on her, I’d be met with “No! Ya Ya do it self.” I don’t remember how old Cal was when he was able to put pants on by himself (backwards or forwards), but Ella just couldn’t and still can’t seem to get this one right. She’d typically put her two legs into one leg of the pants. Or she’d get one leg fully in one pants leg and then an ankle in the other leg and then immediately remove it. I’m not sure what her motivation for immediate removal was. She got close once, with two legs in their appropriate spots in the legs and just… not… quite… able… to pull the pants over her diaper buns. Watching all of this is truly a test of patience.
With water... when Ella wanted water, she’d say “water, peas.” I’d grab a cup and start heading for the fridge. She’d be right on my heels saying, “No! Ya Ya do it self.” Hmm... both the beauty and the curse of the low water dispenser in the fridge – she CAN reach it herself but did I WANT that? “Okay, get yourself some water,” I’d respond, knowing full well what was in store for us. She’d put the cup up to the fridge, push the lever for the water and SPLASH! water all over her and the floor. This mess was easy enough to clean up, but Ya Ya clearly couldn’t “do water self,” yet.
With diaper... it seemed like every diaper change involved Ella’s insistence that “Ya Ya do it self” and plenty of kicking and squirming when I’d respond with “No, Ya Ya CAN’T do it self.” Ella’s attempts at her diaper change, had I let her, would have involved her yanking the dirty one down, tabs still in tact; doing a quick, ineffective swipe of the wipe across her body; opening the new diaper but not undoing the tabs; and then laying the diaper across her front. Now, I’m pretty anal about how the tabs attach and how neatly the diaper fits over her buns; but clearly Ella’s diaper change fell short of effective. Ya Ya could not change diaper "self."
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