Hello, Smarty Pants

Let's talk about Rocky for a minute. . .
I'm not a bragger.  I'm not one of those mothers that says my kids are the best at everything and ohmygod I can't believe how smart he or she is.  The truth is, he is smart.  He knows all of the usual information like his letters, numbers and colors.  He knows the letter sounds and how to spell over 20 words on his own.  He is starting to read.  For a 3.5 year old I think that's pretty good though probably not brag worthy.  There is something a little different about Rocky and the things he knows.  I can't explain it.  He can recite the alphabet backwards without really thinking about it, he remembers where he bought his boots 2 years ago, he can tell you every exit on the highway, its number and where it goes to.  He's starting to learn his left from his right and can give you directions.  He recognizes songs as soon as they start playing and can tell you who is singing them.  He remembers everyone's (i'm talking extended family here) birthday, how old they are now and how old they will be on their birthday. I'm used to Rocky accomplishing things I somtimes think he won't be able to do on his own.  However, today he managed to impress even my hard to amaze self. . .

We have a train table with a wooden train set.  The train table is in the basement now because we ran out of room but in an act to chase away the boredom the other day, I decided to drag the train set upstairs to the living room.  It has between 50 and 100 pieces of tracks, hills, supports and bridges.  It comes with the directions below.

You have to look at the diagram of the finished track, note the letter of the type of track piece you need and then locate that piece in your big jumbled pile of track.  Oh yeah, the tracks aren't marked.  You have to determine wihich piece is which "letter" just by looking at the diagram.  Yesterday afternoon I see Rocky looking at the directions and then looking at his tracks.  Figuring he's just playing I go back to attempting to clean my house.  I come back in a few minutes later and find this:

 Yup, that would be the outer ring of the track well on its way to completion.  In about 15 to 20 minutes he managed to build the entire track, completely by himself just by looking at the directions.  Color me amazed.

And I did manage to catch a shot of Rocky's "thinking" face.  That would be head tilted, chin up and always looking out the window.  When you see this face you know those crazy wheels in is brain are working on something interesting.

 And that concludes the bragging portion of this post : )  Sorry for everyone who had to sit through that!