How smart is that!

I'm amazed constantly at how smart children are! How they pick up on the smallest things. Andrew is very perceptive, he watches and learns, he copies and at times he even comes up with things on his own. Just a little while ago he was playing with his Little People Farm. While he was "feeding" a basket of eggs to some of the animals I hear "broke it". I asked what he broke and he showed me the eggs. So I laughed and said that he needed to cook them now. He jumped up from his place on the floor and ran to the kitchen. I followed him, he was digging in one of the kitchen drawers for things to "cook" with. So I handed him a small frying pan and a spatula and went back to what I was doing. After a few minutes I heard the oven door open and close, and then it slammed a second time. He came running back to the living room with his frying pan. What was he up to. Andrew picked up the eggs and pretended to put them in the pan again and then ran back to the kitchen. This time I followed him. He took the frying pan and put it into the oven, "get back" he told me. I always tell him to stay back when I am opening the oven door so he won't get burned. Then he started digging in my towel drawer, "Now what are you looking for?" "Hot, burn" he tells me and he pulls out an oven mitt from the drawer. He opens the oven door and using the mitt pulls the frying pan out of the oven. He is cooking and he is happy! Such an active imagination!
A few weeks ago I had our big shop vacuum in the living room, I had been cleaning the ceiling fan and the ceiling earlier in the day. Shane and I watched him trying to stack pieces of vacuum hose on top of each other. He couldn't reach the very top of what he was stacking so he drug the vacuum over to the couch, he then climbed up on the couch and placed the last piece that he couldn't reach from the floor.
We took the kids to Crater of Diamonds in Arkansas early this summer. At the end of the day we took our findings to an area that has a lot of diamond facts and exhibits, this is also where they tell you what you have found. In this area they have a wheel with a diamond edge cutting through a piece of granite in cased in a plexi-glass box. The wheel turns by someone turning a crank. Andrew watched Clay play with the wheel and crank for a little while. When Clay got bored and moved on Andrew tried to turn the crank, but he couldn't reach. The two employees for that area watched my son push his toy truck out of the way, drag a near-by chair over to the exhibit, climb on the chair and turn the crank. They were just as surprised as we were that he would think to do something like that.
It just goes to show how smart children are when given the chance to express themselves, no matter the age. It also shows that they are paying attention and absorbing everything that goes on around them.