HI, please elaborate why you do this, do you want to learn IR? AND do you want your switch to work with specific buttons and remotes, or do you want the lights to flicker every time it detects any signal?
I have heard types of lights themselves that cause false IR triggers.
I would use microcontroller to decode instead of counter. for more accuracy
the counter will work, but you need to tune it to toggle on the right number of counts for said button, ie on pin 2 counts every 3rd pulse, when a single press of button is more like 16 pulses, try a higher "decode output #"