my child is a genius

today i was impressed with dean's ingenuity.
first, he was using his Rocky crane car (the one that doesn't have its own engine--it needs Gordon to pull it around) to grab cars that had fallen off the tracks. one of the cars we have has a little log that tends to fall off often. so dean wanted to use Rocky to pick up the log, and when he couldn't use the magnet on the end of Rocky's crane arm to pick up the log, he asked me what the log was made of. "is it made of metal?" "no, dean, it's made of wood." "oh. here's a paper clip. paper clips are metal, right mom?" "yes, dean." and then he proceeded to attach a paper clip to it so he could play the way he wanted to.
later, i couldn't see what he was doing because i was playing with the baby. but he was apparently still thinking about magnets and metal:
"mom, are metals made of magnets?"
"what?"
"oh. i mean, are magnets made of metal?"
"yes"
"are batteries metal?"
"parts of them--the ends are metal, so they can conduct electricity"
"oh."
then i had to look and see what he was doing.
he had taken a bunch of AAA batteries from a drawer in our bedroom, and was loading them into the micromachines container, again using Rocky.

in other news, max correctly identified the colors of several objects this evening. max also did a hilarious dance with a mini maraca to entertain his baby brother. reed was laughing hysterically and it was pretty darn cute to watch.