Lest we ever believe they aren’t watching us…

Yesterday Leah and I were outside playing, as we are on most afternoons. She wandered into the garage at one point, and before I knew it she had grabbed the watering can and was meandering up the hill to the tiny baby dogwood tree we planted up there a couple of months ago. Laughing, I asked her if she was going to water the plants…and before I could get the words out, I realized that was, in fact, what she was doing.

As I watched her, I was dumbfounded. I just shook my head over and over as I took her picture, amazed that she had paid enough attention to her daddy on both occasions that he had done the same thing. She saw him, and began doing the very thing he was doing.

Y’all, she is only 16 months old, and she is watching us. She sees what we are doing and, because we are her examples and her models in this world, she does the same things. She is watching our every move and listening to our every word (whether it seems like it all the time or not), and she is learning every moment. She cannot repeat every word we say, nor can she physically do everything we do, but she is soaking it up. At 16 months old, she is soaking up everything she sees. It is scary for me to realize that I am what she sees. She is learning from me.

What an awesome responsibility.