🫎If You Give a Moose a Muffin: When One Decision Opens the Door🫎
Apr 14, 2026
🔉Here's the audio version on Substack
This is another in my series of Picture Books for the Grown-up Soul. We’re looking beneath the surface of picture books and seeing how they speak to us.
Last week, we looked at decision fatigue. This week I want us to look at the power behind making decisions.
They begin things.
I’ve got the perfect picture book for this: If You Give a Moose a Muffin, buy Laura Numeroff.
A boy gives a moose a muffin. The moose wants jam so the boy gets it. The moose wants a sweater, then craft supplies. The story winds through a long list of silly requests and loops back to the beginning with the moose wanting another muffin. It’s the perfect example of how one small yes creates a beautiful, exhausting, chaotic cascade of more decisions.
Years ago, on a snow day, when the one who called me mom first was about two, we decided to play “If You Give a Moose a Muffin” after reading the book. I was snowbound with a very verbal, very energetic toddler, and it seemed like it would keep us busy.
First, we had to find a moose. The stuffed Christmas reindeer that hadn’t been put away was close enough.
Next, mini muffins, regular muffins or the Texas muffins? Regular muffins won.
While the muffins were baking, the one who made me mom first wondered if we could film it, which meant finding the video camera, a blank tape, and being sure it was charged. This was before videos were easy, so we had to figure out how to safely put VHS camera on the floor so it was the right height for an almost-two-year old.
Our project ended up taking the entire day.
At that time, I had no idea that that day would become such a tender memory of her childhood for me. Just seeing the cover of that makes me smile as tears of joy spill out.
On that particular day, I was just making a decision:
Do nothing to survive a snowbound day with a toddler, or embrace the opportunity and see what happens.
We leaned in.
And the decisions cascaded.
One decision opened the door to so many more.
You decide to make muffins. Now you have to decided the flavor, whether to add chocolate chips, if you’ll let the toddler crack the eggs (I did), how you’ll handle the inevitable mess. (A sweet springer spaniel named Belle helped with that.)
In your life, it might look like:
You decide to take the job. Now you have to decide when you tell your current boss, how to negotiate, what to do about childcare, whether to say yes to the going-away party.
You decide to have the hard conversation. Now you have to decide when, where to start, what tone to use, whether to follow up with a text.
We expect decisions to be endpoints when they are actually doorways.
We think:
Make the choice.
Check the box.
Move on.
Decisions don’t end things. They begin things.
Last week, we talked about how decision fatigue comes from three things, volume, methodology, and the cascade. The cascade, the reality that decisions lead to more decisions can feel exhausting because we just want to be one and done.
On our snow day, I learned something. There’s a cascade that comes after making a decision. It’s easy to make that a problem, especially when we’ve burned through our bandwidth trying to make perfect decisions. If I’d spent my morning agonizing about whether making muffins was the “right” activity, we would have missed the whole day.
The magic wasn’t making the perfect choice.
The magic was making a choice and letting the day unfold.
The snow day wasn’t perfect. The kitchen was a disaster. Blackberry jam may or may not have ended up on the white couch. The furry assistant may or may not have helped herself to the muffin during filming. The camera was knocked over several times. Having a toddler direct and star in her own movie is not for the faint hearted.
Still the decision led to laughter and memories.
The moose in the storybook doesn’t stop to ask, “Is this muffin the right one?” He eats it and wonders if there’s jam to put on it.
So…here’s your Moose Moment.
What decision have you been treating like an endpoint when it’s actually a doorway?
What choice are you avoiding because you can see the cascade coming and it feels like too much?
What if you decided anyway?
Maybe you decide to send the email, knowing you’ll have to handle the response.
Maybe you decide to start the project, knowing you’ll have to figure out the next steps as you go.
Maybe you make the muffins for the moose because the moose knows what we forget:
The cascade is where life happens.
I’ll be cheering you on and enjoying some yummy blueberry muffins,
I’ve created journaling prompts about decision making. You’ll find them on my Pinterest Journal Prompts board. Don’t forget to follow! (Thanks in advance.)
Click here to buy If You Give a Moose a Muffin.
If this blog post resonated with you, I have several books I’ve written that you might enjoy.
Click here to buy my books.
