christmas junk- a tale of nature versus nurture

The nature versus nurture debate occurs often in our home. We look at our son across the room, humming to himself as he plays with his train and we wonder - was he born with that fondness for trains or did we stoke that love? Both my husband and I had train sets when we were young and we both still enjoy all things railroad.

I am a somewhat impatient person. I talk to the cars in front of me, gently reminding them that the light has TURNED GREEN. I cannot sit through slow movies or read slow books, and I will lose interest if the web page is too slow to load. I am fairly confident that I have passed this impatience on to my son.

When I was a kid I was always singing. I hummed to myself while playing with my dolls and now I listen to my son do the same thing. He hums while he eats, he sings while he plays with his monster trucks... He loves to play musical instruments and easily learns musical terms- he uses "adagio" for "slow", as in, "You are pushing the grocery cart too adagio, Mommy, go presto!" Did I give him his love of music by sharing my love with him?

My husband loves sports. Especially Cleveland sports. He watches basketball, baseball, football. He watches the shows that prepare us for the game we are about to watch, and then he watches the shows that dissect the game we just viewed. Sometimes he watches games that were played 20 years ago. He plays sports video games. And Matthew? My little three year old can name all the teams in the NFL simply by looking at their logo. He has a favorite player- Joshua Cribbs and he loves to play Madden on the Wii. By the age of two he knew who Lebron was, and now he knows that "we don't like Lebron, mommy". He loves to play football, running around the backyard with his ball trying to tackle mommy and daddy. He even gets in trouble at day care every so often for tackling his buddies. OK, more that every so often, but he is getting better. His love of sports? Passed on to him by daddy.

This year Matthew is super excited about Christmas. He loves watching the holiday decorations going up around town. "Look, mommy, even the grocery store is getting ready for Christmas!" As we were walking to the car last night after running an errand we could see a few houses with tasteful holiday lights glowing. "Look, mommy! Those houses are ready for Christmas!" We then got in the car and headed down the street, right past a house completely covered in lights. Blazing lights of every color, shining down on a front yard full of holiday joy. Every inch of this front yard held a dazzling holiday decoration- reindeer bobbing their heads up and down, inflatable snow globes with Santa trapped inside, giant basketball player sized candy canes. My little guy piped up from the back seat, "Look, mommy! Look at all that Christmas junk!" Christmas junk? Now who did he inherit that from? Out of the mouths of babes...

christmas junk?