I was doing bookwork.

That’s what we do Monday mornings, bookwork and ordering, it’s as standard as breakfast.

I had a green sticky note with some totals on it that I wanted to transfer to a more official location, but until I had time to do that, the sticky note sufficed.

It was laying on the counter, patiently waiting it’s turn of recognition, when I moved a book and the breeze created by this movement sent my green sticky note fluttering to the floor.

I eyed it from my perch, wishing it back but it refused to budge, oh well, I would get it when I was ready for it.

In the meantime, however, a curious little guy named Myles noticed a bright lime green spot on the floor and came to investigate. I watched him a bit, he wiggled his fingers as it stuck to them for a second then fluttered to the ground. He tried to pick it up but his baby fingers weren’t having much luck.

I went back to my papers and forgot about my baby and the sticky note.

About 10 minutes later I got up to put Myles down for his nap but first I was going to pick up that sticky note.

Except it was no where around.

“Huh, he musta ate it.” I muttered to myself as I searched a bit. Oh well, it would turn up.

I found Myles in the toy room and as I scooped him up I noticed shreds of lime green paper on his shirt.

He really did start eating that paper! I thought as I headed back to the nursery to change his diaper.

As I laid him down, he started throwing a fit, diaper changes are basically a crime in his opinion. His crying, however, gave me a perfect view of the inside of his mouth… the inside of his green sticky note covered mouth!

I started digging and pulled out many fairly big clumps of paper. By the time I was done I had a fairly big pile of wet, smushed paper and I was pretty sure I had found all of my sticky note.

The whole thing… in his mouth… and he hadn’t even so much as gagged.

I did not try to put it back together. The numbers on there weren’t that important. 🙂

We attended a conference on ‘Relationships’ last spring. It was 3 days long and each day held a theme. Day 1 was business relationships, day 3 was on any and all relationships and day 2…

Day 2 was exciting… It was on parenting. 🙂

And parenting is something that I get pretty fired up about, because how you parent matters more then anything you’ve ever done, and it matters more then most people seem to be aware of!

Guys… We have got to get it right! We cannot leave it up for chance, just hoping our kiddos turn out all right! This is real people with real feelings and real souls that we are in charge of!

I actually often have to tone down what I say when the subject comes up, because I’m so passionate about it that I might end up scaring people or even making them feel like they aren’t doing a good job and that is not my goal at all, since I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t be helpful to anyone.

But still…

In so many ways you hold your child’s future in your hands, it is their life but you are shaping that life.

You are the voice in their head, your words have the power to make them or break them.

There’s 2 things that I have a really hard time keeping my mouth shut about when I see it. (and sometimes I wonder if it’s ok to stay silent.)

1. Control. You are literally abusing your right as the authority figure in your child’s life if you control them. The goal is to have a relationship with our kids and through that we can guide and teach them.
2. Words. The words you speak over, to and about your children carry a spiritual weight that can and will effect their life, if you speak degrading or abusive words to or about your child you are literally opening doors for demons to enter into your child’s life to torment and confuse them until these kiddos grow up and figure out that these demons can be cast out. (Which by the way, is a revelation that most people never have.)

Yes, it really, literally is that big of a deal.

Don’t make your children grow up to clean up the mess that you made out of their lives.

What’s all that got to do with a big red button?

It doesn’t really have anything to do with it actually, I just got a bit off track.

So back to the right track… 🙂

At this conference we learned about the big red button.

Every parent has one, and every child knows it. 🙂

So, you know in those moments, when you just kind of ignore your child’s minor misdeed or whining because sometimes, it’s easier to just let the small things slide. (Am I the only one with this parenting flaw?)

This is when Kyna deems it appropriate to use the big red button. 

When he wants something and I ignore him, hoping that he’ll just forget about it, it does not sit well with him and he figured out that if he stands right beside me and screams really loudly, it will most definitely get my attention.

Even though my response to this is 100% of the time not a pretty sight, he still does it, because to him, even a negative response is better then being ignored when he needs a little bit of love.

One evening we were outside cleaning the work truck and Kyna wanted something,

Checkers’ answer was, “When we go inside.”

Kyna kept whining and Checkers ignored him. “You might want to talk it out with him.” I said, “Because he doesn’t like being ignored.” I then proceeded to tell him how Kyna reacts when I try the ignoring tactic.

Just then we realized that Kyna stopped whining and was on the other side of the work truck very intentionally running his dirty hands over the clean truck.

I was amazed. He’s only two but he already figured out that I have zero tolerance for being yelled at so that’s a sure way to get my attention and he also figured out that Checkers’ has a higher tolerance for noise so that probably won’t work on him but messing up Daddy’s clean truck will most definitely get his attention.

How do they know these things?

And if they know that much what else are they seeing in our lives that might not be good?