Love notes before bed

After the Blissdom Canada conference early last month, my son was looking through some of the items that made their home in my swag bag. A little red notebook and some pencils fell out of the Timspiration package from Tim Hortons. 

“Can I have these?” he asked

“Sure Buddy” I replied

and during that very moment our entire night time routine would be changed for the better.

My husband and I tucked the boys into bed that night and crawled into bed ourselves to watch some television. Soon after, small footsteps arrived by the side of my bed with a delivery. 

“This is for you” he shyly said, not sure whether he was going to get into trouble for being out of bed. I said thank you and he excitedly gave me a hug and ran back to his room. 

I looked at the little note filled with heart drawings, two stick figures hugging, one small, one big and a special message saying ‘I love you Mom’. It warmed my heart. 

The same routine followed every night. Love notes for mom, love notes for dad and on the rare occasion there would be a special note for the brothers. 

The notes were unique and special for the day, ‘thank you for letting me watch that movie tonight mom’, ‘I loved how you made that cake and icing’, ‘I wish daddy was home so we can play with him’.

It was evident that this was not some typical bed time stalling, he put thought and care into each note and each funny stick figure picture.

He started to bring me an extra piece of paper so I could write him a note in return. I promised him that if he fell asleep, he would find a message when he woke up!

I drew him funny coded messages such as  an eye, a heart and the letter U, for ‘I love you’. He found this hysterical and created his own.

” I love you like Hiccup loves Toothless” I wrote to him, using our favourite viking characters for reference, he made fun of my attempts to draw the dragon and sent me the same message with his own version of the drawing the following night.

And on and on it went. Night after night, we delivered each other secret letters of love. He expressed himself in a way I never knew he could and we created a whole new bond with eachother. It’s amazing what can start from one simple notebook.

One by one, the pages are torn from the book and it pulls on my heart strings knowing our bedtime notes are coming to an end.

Maybe Santa will deliver a special notepad in his stocking this year.