This is the book that started it all!

When I first started writing it, I thought I was making a fun little rhyming picture book for Wyatt. What I didn’t expect were all the questions it would make me ask about values, life, and how our everyday choices slowly shape who we become.

I wanted to teach Wyatt about kindness, respect, curiosity, courage, honesty, gratitude, and so many more things. But as I was writing I realized I couldn’t just tell him about those values.

I had to actually practice and live them…daily.

Values aren’t really proven by what we say we believe. I think our values reveal themselves by what we repeatedly choose. The things we return to (especially in tough times) become our habits, and our habits become our daily actions. And those habits become the example that our kids and others see daily. I learned the little choices we make daily aren’t really little at all. The little things are what we return to over and over until those small choices quietly become our lives.

The more I wrote, the more I wondered where my own values had come from. Which ones had I chosen for myself? Which ones had simply been handed to me? Which ones was I ready to carry forward… and which ones was I ready to change?

Maybe that’s part of being human. We’re all learning from someone, while someone else is learning from us.