Nature vs. Nuture

Do you ever sit and wonder how you became the person you are now?  Or looked at your child(ren) and noticed so many of your traits (or even none of your traits)?  I find my self thinking about these things quite often.  When I look at my personality traits I see a lot of both of my parents in me.  My perfectionism, desire to do good, and accepting nature come from my mom.  My charismatic personality, outgoing-ness, and hyperactivity comes from my dad.  When you add the two, you get a pretty funny combo of me.  Hahaha!  Of course, I think I have some of my very own personality traits as well, such as my strength and analytical nature, but amazingly quite a bit of me is my parents (funnily enough, depending on which parent I am with, I always get comments about how much I look like them as well, so I must be a good mix of the two of them looks-wise as well).  Now that I have a child of my own, it just amazes me how much of me L has in him.  I would say, it's safe to say that because L is so much like me, that would be the main reason we butt heads more often than not.  This isn't to say that L doesn't have some of A.  He definitely has his temper.  Also his need to touch EVERY button he sees and tear everything apart!  L's facial expressions are completely A.  But mostly, that kid is all me.  I could never try to deny him as mine!  Hahahah!  So the question is this: is he a mini me because he's around me most and picks up on all my Maggie-isms or is it genetic?  In the case of L, I am liable to think it's got to be a little bit of both.

But every now and then you run across a situation that makes you think it may be a lot more nature than nurture.  For example, my brother has a little girl who is 6 months old.  She is a little pistol just like her cousin.  She hates sleeping and is high energy already (boy, do I feel their pain!)  Neither my brother or sister-in-law were anything like that when they were little (or even now), so where did this little spitfire come from? Maybe nature has more clout than I originally thought? 

Sometimes, I just sit and think of how amazing it is that we can procreate.  That little boy was made out of A and I's love for each other.  He's a little bit of both of us, good and bad.  To me, that is something that is truly awesome.