Saying Yes

I say “no” to my kids way too often.  I know that I need to relax and lighten up a bit and I’m trying to do that while still keeping some discipline, but its something that I have to work at . . . realizing that its okay for there to be messes to clean up or for my day to have some side tracks to the schedule that I try to keep.  Over the weekend, I got to work on it.  I bought a new shelving unit for my home office and my 4 year old saw the long, empty box before it made it out to the trash.  His eyes lit up and asked if he could color it.  My initial thought was that it should just go out to the garbage, but I told him I could go ahead and cut a piece of cardboard off of it that he could color on.  I obviously didn’t understand his question because he had to explain that he wanted to color it to make it a canoe.  He has a much better imagination than I do and could see that box for its possibilities!  I decided to practice saying “yes” and asked my husband to cut a couple of holes in it to make it a kayak for the kids to play in & yes, to color.  It has been such a fun thing for them and even the babies who are enjoying crawling in and out of it and they know that they only get to keep it one more day since it will go out with the trash on Thursday.