Sometimes in parenting there are times when you want to laugh and cry at exactly the same time.

Today I put my Pandora DC Talk station on our TV because it was just too quiet and I needed some feel-good music to listen to. I went across the kitchen to the laundry room to put in a load while Micah played in the living room. I can hear "Into Jesus" playing quietly, when suddenly...

I mean DEAFENING. Shake-the-walls loud. Call-the-cops loud.

I go flying across the kitchen, scared out of my skin and prepared to give Micah a fiery reprimand after I turn off the speakers, when I recognize the shrill scream of my son in the middle of the deafening music, and he comes bolting straight toward ME, crying and flailing and just a picture of abject terror.

He had turned the volume knob on the amplifier ALL the way up and then hit the power button.

I just gather him up in my arms and hit the power button. Then we sit in the leather chair and my heart can't make up its mind whether to laugh or cry, but mostly I laugh. And hold my poor traumatized son as he clings to me for dear life. He cried like that for a long time. When he finally started to calm down, I said to him very calmly and quietly, to reinforce what I've said to him many, many times: "Don't push that button."

Lesson learned, I guess?

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