all i want for christmas.....

well its that time of year again... toy commercials on every channel and toys in every aisle of every store. this is the first year that aidan really understands that he's getting stuff on christmas morning, ...and so he's been waiting like every other kid with eager anticipation. several times a day Aidan runs up to me with updates to his ridiculously long Christmas/birthday list saying " i want this....will you buy it for me?" at first we'd just say 'we'll see' but day after day, hour after hour it has started to wear on nerves...lately when he asks i end up telling him "i don't even know why you want toys...all you ever want to do is watch treehouse!" it seems with each passing day i get more and more annoyed with him...and maybe even myself for managing to raise a greedy kid. so when our church brought in the christmas shoe boxes, i thought that would give me an opportunity to teach him a lesson in giving....as oppose to getting...as well as doing a great thing for a child who has very little. i had hoped rather naively that this would solve the problem! however, the entire shopping trip was filled with "ooh mommy can i have that too?" so on my drive home i devised a plan...and when we got home i sat him down in front of my laptop and showed him the saddest world vision videos on youtube that i could find saying "LOOK this kid has NOTHING...NOT EVEN HIS ARM!!!" but still every day, several times a day i am bombarded with the gazillion requests.. i'm at my wits end...and so when he came up to me this time saying "mom i want a bounce back race car and a train table and a robot, a remote car and a car mat -will you buy that for me?" I looked at him and said what i've been saying every day for weeks, but this time with a lot of frustration and perhaps a bit of anger.....'aidan, your birthday is in two weeks, christmas is two weeks after that...STOP ASKING ME FOR STUFF! GIFTS ARE MEANT TO BE SURPRISES" this time adding "AND NO ONE WANTS TO BUY GIFTS FOR GREEDY BOYS!" aidan looked at me with sorry in his eyes and said reassuringly to me ' mom, i'm sorry, but its just hard for us kids!' i guess its been too long for me to remember what its like to be a kid.