Of Individualism

Yes, my two-year-old is a parrot.  I might as well carry her on my shoulder. 

A couple of days ago, after hearing her daddy ask his own dad if he'd heard something she stood in the doorway yelling, just like Daddy, "Dad, you hear Mom?!" and was very persistent until she received a response.  And for the next couple of hours, no matter what she was told, Grandy was "Dad" - that's what her own father had called him, anyway.

Situations such as these leave us careful of how we word things and thoughtless phrases we throw out - wanting to snatch them back before she can catch them.

Other times, though, rather than seeing a tiny mirror of ourselves, we're left thinking, "Where did that come from?!" 

For instance, when we hand her a Christmas present and instruct her to "shake it." Rather than watching our little girl listen intently for rattling in the box we see, instead, her tiny little hips shaking with all they've got.  Where did that come from?

Or how she's recently decided, when reciting her animal sounds, to make an addition to her repertoire - a giraffe, apparently, says, "Ah-oo."  Where did that come from?

There are so many instances when I just can't pinpoint the moment she was explicitly taught (or even exposed to) something and, yet, she knows it (or makes it up).  A wake-up call to the fact that I am not the only influential factor in my daughter's life.  At such a young age she is already becoming an individual - departing ever so slightly from us, creating her own ideas, decisions and actions. 

I pray, though she continues to be her unique self, we may make such an impression on her that she makes the choice to follow in our faith footsteps, if nothing else.