Square Peg, Round Hole

The ten years leading up to Coen's birth I spent working with toddlers. One to four year olds to be exact. And I've never experienced a little boy quite like my own. Coen is totally crazy/silly and can be super energetic. He loves to wrestle and and tumble and hang upside down and swing but more than that he likes to explore. By explore I mean sit for super long periods of time and fiddle with stuff. Opening, closing, scratching, twisting, sorting, moving, switching whatever he can get his hands on. It used to concern me a bit when  I would give him a rattle and he would never shake it when other kids his age shook things and threw things. When given jingle bells, other children in Coen's music class would discover that they could make noise and would jingle and shake to their hearts delight. Coen, however, would look at the jingle bells instead. I could see him thinking, "What's this? What this taste like? Why is it making that sound? How is this attached?".
So, when I got this sorting cube for him for Christmas I wondered if he would like it. As it turns out....he does. It's for ages three and up but he's already gotten a few shapes in their appropriate spaces! Of course, most of the time, he doesn't.