Smarty Pants
As I've mentioned before, Dax is really into geography right now. Really, REALLY into it. The boy sleeps with an Atlas and insists that we take his United States of America puzzle and his map with us everywhere.
He likes to put the puzzle pieces on the appropriate state on his map before piecing the puzzle back together again. He also enjoys identifying the states for us and telling us a little anecdote about each one (like that his cousins live in Virginia or that Mt. Rushmore is in South Dakota or that the Sears Tower is in Illinois or that Sarah Palin lives in Alaska and she can see Russia from her house).
There's a huge sculpture of earth that hangs above the international foods section of our grocery store. Whenever Dax goes shopping with me he insists that we go "see planet Earth" and we circle around the salsas and marmite biscuits and Japanese Pocky while he points out Antarctica and Australia and Madagascar and Africa.
I love this. I love to see him get so excited about something and I love that he soaks up information like a little sponge. But I'm also thinking I had better start studying up a bit because when your four year old can identify states and countries better than you can it can be embarrassing.