Think they're not watching? They are.

Approximately 48 things made me cry today, and most of them began with Judah. I'm simultaneously in the throes of pregnancy hormones, sleep deprivation, and encountering the iron will of a two-year-old. The results are getting uglier by the second. But one of the things that made me cry today was actually good.

Judah and I went to Nathan's office to meet him for lunch, as we often do. A lot of times there are other people with us like one or more of our parents or various other family members, but today it happened to be just the three of us. We locked up the office and began to walk toward the restaurant next door. Between the office and the restaurant there's a pretty long stretch of sidewalk, and then there's a parking lot we have to cross. Judah knows to stop at the curb before the parking lot and wait for someone to catch up and hold his hand, but a lot of times he'll hold our hands the whole way. So when he turned to us outside the door of the office and said, "Hold hands!" we both reached for his hands, thinking that's what he wanted. But he wouldn't take our hands and kept insisting, "Hold hands!" Finally we realized that he wanted us to hold hands with each other. So we grabbed hands, Judah smiled at us, and moved to Nathan's other side to take his free hand. A few seconds later he leaned forward to make sure we were still holding hands.

If you think your kids aren't paying attention to how you're interacting with your spouse or that they don't care, think again. Judah's only two. And already he looks for proof that everything's good, that his world is secure. How wonderful and how scary to be trusted like that!