10 Easy Ways to Show Your Kids You Care in 10 Minutes or Less

It can be so easy to get caught up in the day to day hustle and bustle of life and not take as many opportunities as we mean to take to let our kids know we enjoy being their parents.  Here a few quick ways to remind your little ones of how much you care: 


1. Offer to paint your daughter's toenails for her BEFORE she asks you to.




2. Have your son's army men all set up in formation when he gets home from school.



3. Show them the lock of hair you saved from their baby days.



4. Watch some videos on youtube and impress them with expert level shadow puppets.



5. Incorporate a Friday Night Pillow Fight.



6. Use cookie cutters to press their sandwiches into fun shapes.



7. Let them help you pump the gas.



8. Heat up their towels in the dryer right before they get out of the bathtub.



9. Make homemade playdough and let them use those cookie cutters on it.



10. Have an impromtu water balloon, snowball or leaf fight, depending on the season.
 
 
Feel free to add any ideas of your own! 

When I Met You

When first we met,


I was surprised by your eyes

Not blue, as expected

But brown, like wished upon pennies



When we first met,

and They passed you to me

Your fingers, thin as telephone wire,

stretched just to curl 'round my pinky



When we first met,

the world dropped away,

lost importance, paling in contrast

to the inconcievable smallness of your nose



When we first met,

your mouth searched against my chest,

your hair, silky as spiderwebs,

floating across my neck



When we first met,

your Being stole my heart,

stopped my breath,

changed my world



But. . .



After we first met, 

I didn't know

I believed the wrong people

I let them cut you



After we first met,

I was ignorant of the facts,

blinded my own good intentions

and misled by Those I Trusted



After we first met,

I never knew the scope of the apology I'd owe you,

the risks I exposed you to,

or what I was taking away



After we first met,

I made a mistake

and let you pay the balance

Without meaning to



And. . .



Since then when I met you,

I've kept you from harm,

I've celebrated your laughter

And comforted your little hurts



Since then when I met you,

You've never again cried without comfort,

been left tearfully lurching for an absent protection

you instinctively knew should have been there



Since then when I met you,

I've never again failed you so gravely,

never again cost you so dearly,

would never again let anyone cut you in any way



If. . .



I could go back to when I met you,

I'd protect every part of your Being

I'd erase the one time you were violated

I'd steal you away from Them

I'd grab myself by the shoulders

and not shy away from the apprehension

I let be silenced by Those I Trusted

I'd keep you close instead

I'd hold you at my heart where you belonged

I'd keep all of the joy and forego your pain

and the pain I'd carry later

and the scars I allowed us both to obtain

You've always been nothing but a light in my world

and I am so forever sorry I let some darkness into part of yours

"Spanking Hurts Everybody" by Robert R. Gillogly

http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/jan1981/v37-4-article1.htm