Fly Free

City Wings Headband by LA Native

One of my favorite child rearing bloggers is Zach Aboard. During a particularly stressful child rearing day (nay, week), I came across her post Enjoy the Ride. I love how she has photos of her son in a swing woven throughout the words, so fitting. My dad use to say all of the time to Enjoy Life! He had phrases with various words and used them as acronyms for his wise owl advice. One of his most famous acronyms was FLY FREE. I will have to find the detail of this one and post it sometime.



Child Costumes

Here are her words:

Everyone has sleepless nights. Everyone endures tantrums. Everyone has moments when they need the mute button on their kids. Everyone wonders if they are doing the right thing. Everyone has days when they are at the end of their rope.

But I always tell myself to remember -- he's just a little boy with a whirling twirling mind and a body bursting with energy and he's still learning this whole "how to be a person" routine.

My job is not to order or ask or expect or demand or direct. My job is to teach and guide and explain, and explain again, and then to do some more explaining and forgive and forget and hug and humor and hand hold. And most of all to listen and learn. That's right, we the parents need to listen and learn. I try to remember that it's my job to learn how to communicate with him, not his job to take orders from me.

It differs from kid to kid, mama to mama. It's just takes some patience to find your path.

Through the ups and downs, I try to remember to hold on, and enjoy the ride.

Dreaming by Ben.Doo.Dat



I took Cindy's parenting inspirational advice and framed it in a free scrapbooking page from Smile Box, so I can print it out and hang it up. They have everything you need to make online scrapbooks, even adding music, video and moving graphics (but I think you need to upgrade to a paid account to save them):



Wouldn't it look pretty to have an inspiration wall like this? You could add your own inspiration words or family photos, perhaps in a sepia tone to the pages you pick for a soft and lovely accent wall, maybe even as a headboard accent piece. Tutorial found HERE from Thrifty Decor Chick: