Computer geek milestone

A few days ago I asked Thomas if he'd like to paint on the computer. Since then he's been happily scribbling in the GIMP, which isn't exactly appropriate for a three-year-old. It's roughly the equivalent of Photoshop, so it's not really a paint program, and ease-of-use is not its strong suit. The only other choice I had was KPaint, which (at least in the 0.6.2 version I have) doesn't do much. I showed him how to pick different colors, but that's about all. At the very least, I figured it would be good hand-eye coordination practice. His favorite thing to draw is a "T."

Last night he was mousing away. I was in the next room, and he came trotting out. "I need to show you something."

"OK," I said, figuring that he'd accidentally pulled up some menu or other, "what is it?"

"It's the up-and-down thingy."

Hmm. What could that be?

He climbed up into the chair and showed me. Somehow he'd zoomed in on his latest masterpiece, so it was now too big for the window. He moused over to the scroll bar, and started scrolling the picture up and down.

"Did you figure that out all by yourself?"

"No, you did it."

"You saw me do it before, and remembered how?"

"Yes."

I was so proud! My little budding computer geek.