Cleverness shall be rewarded

I made cookies this morning.

Or rather, I baked the cookies that I mixed up yesterday this morning.  Mainly because it's so much cooler in the morning, but also because Chris is working overtime and I wanted him to be able to take some in his lunch/dinner.

So I was baking cookies and making breakfast at the same time.  You may well imagine that the Boy thought the cookies were PART of breakfast and began begging for cookies almost immediately.  I patiently explained 437 times that the cookies were NOT for breakfast, that he could have a cookie AFTER he ate a decent LUNCH.  And after the 437th explanation he seemed to accept it and move on.  Which was nice.

Fast forward.  The Girl is taking a nice little nap, and my parents are coming down today to pick up the Boy for a little sleepover at their house.  I was talking to him about what we were going to pack in his overnight bag and he declares that he needs a little snack.

(Now, everyone is different, but in our house, in the pantry, there's a shelf near the bottom that the Boy can reach and access Boy-appropriate snacks: fruit and cereal bars, dried fruit, nuts, occasionally crackers etc.)

So he goes to the pantry and pulls out his "snack bag" (it's a simple cloth bag that holds zippies full of snacks) and says he needs to put together some snacks to take to Nana's house (never mind that as soon as he gets to Nana's house he'll get all NEW snacks, but that's beside the point).  So we go through the pantry packing up his snacks to take to Nana's.  He declares that he needs some, "Nuts!  Mama, cashews and almonds and pecans (which he pronounces PAW-cawns)!"  So I pack a little zippy of nuts.  Then, "Dried fruit, Mama!  I need some mango!"  So I pack him a little zippy of mango.  Then he says, "I need a fig bar, Mama."  So he gets a fig and cereal bar (from Trader Joe's, natch) and adds that to the bag.  Then he says, "I will also need a cookie, Mama."

At which point I look at him and think, "He has staged this clever ruse in the hopes that in the midst of all of those healthy snacks, I wouldn't notice that he's asking for a cookie!"  But it's so clever, that of course, I gave him a cookie.

Which he promptly ate.



The bag of snacks remains untouched.  I can't help but think that, in spite of their nutritional deficiencies maybe treats DO make kids smarter...