Budding Interests

One of the fun things about parenting is watching our boys' interests develop over time. Caleb has been a car kid from the start. Since he was 18 months, he's loved kneeling down to drive toy cars on the couch. One of the first words Caleb said clearly was "wheel." He used to drive his Matchbox school bus on the couch and focus intently on the wheels, saying, "wheel, wheel, wheel." The Matchbox collection has grown to about 100 cars now, and, honestly, he really treasures about 80-90% of those cars.

Caleb's interest of course extends to real cars too. When he meets new adults, he says, "Hi, what kind of car do you drive?" To answer "a black car" is not acceptable. Caleb wants to know the make and model. And if you say, "I drive a black Honda Accord with fog lights and a sunroof" you'll score extra points for the additional details. Caleb can identify over 30 models of cars on the road. I'm sure he would know more, but unfortunately he's limited by his mother's knowledge of cars. (I just don't know the different types of Mercedes, Lexuses, Volvos, and BMWs very well. Though, in my defense, it would help if they had more creative names than letter-number combinations like XC90!)

Hayden has been a sports kid since he was just a few months old. He LOVES balls. Recently Matt was watching baseball on TV and changed the channel to a different show, and Hayden started protesting saying, "Baseball!" Right now Hayden's favorite is basketball. And I will admit that I am pretty excited about that. We recently bought him his first full size basketball, and Hayden grinned the whole way home, holding tight to that ball. Actually, he also bounced it off the back of my seat in the car playing catch with it, and for Hayden that was great fun. (Not so fun for me though.) We have a Little Tykes hoop and Hayden will take real shots, rather than just walk up to dunk the ball. He holds the ball over his head and says, "Ball Shot!" It's too cute. Though sometimes the words come out sounding like he's saying something different and not so cute =)

I used to think that when young children showed such a strong interest in things that the parents must push it on them from a young age. But I'm realizing what a strong role genetics plays. It's exciting and scary all at the same time.