So...what is a yak anyway??

I know that all parents think their children are brilliant.....I am well aware of those little things they look for that confirm that their children are gifted. That being said.....I'm fairly certain that Benjamin is a genius, and I have the proof!!

Awhile ago I bought Benjamin these little wooden alphabet blocks. I liked that they looked sort of old fashioned and they all had letters and numbers on them (that's me....always finding an opportunity to educate!) He's played with the blocks off and on but recently he's really been into them. He likes to ceremonially dump all the blocks out of their little bag onto the floor and then build "choo choo" train with them. Basically that's the blocks all lined up single file across the coffee table. He is surprisingly adept of keeping the blocks in a very straight line but, although impressive, that's not the brilliant part.

The other thing he likes to do with the blocks is to build a "tower." At first he demanded that Nate or I build the block tower so that he could swiftly knock it down (arguably the best part!) After a few days he began to build his own towers. He's really good at stacking the blocks one on top of the other. So far his record is 14 blocks stacked on top of one another, but that's not the brilliant part either!

The other day we were feeling sort of lazy (okay...it was me...I was feeling lazy) and didn't really want to go through the effort of building a tower. Benjamin began to hand me the blocks one by one and I would tell him what letter was on each block and the corresponding pictures that demonstrated the letter (do you see where I'm going with this?? There really is a yak in the story!)

"This block has the letter 'N.' It makes the sound 'nnnnn' like 'nest' and 'needle.' 'Nest' and 'Needle' start with the letter 'N.' There's about 60 blocks with each letter being represented twice and some that just have numbers. So the next day Benjamin is building his block "choo choo" again. He picks up the block with the letter "Y" and says "Oh....Yak!" WHAT?!?! Nate and I just looked at each other with disbelief. Then we both wondered aloud...."So...what is a yak?" We better find out quickly because our child is most certainly a genius!