Outsmarted By a Two-Year-Old

Today after work I stopped by Jennifer's because she had some Halloween goodies for me! She takes such good care of me.

When I walked in, Reed was sitting at the table. A ghost-adorned bucket was in front of him, and as soon as he saw "aintie," he started pulling candy and snacks out and saying, "Open, Ashy."

FYI: He's the only one who's allowed to call me "ashy." The only one.

It didn't take him long to realize he was wrapped around aintie's finger. You can't resist his mischievous grin and adorable baby voice.

So of course I obliged. And before I knew it, we had opened two fruit rope things, a granola bar, a package of cheese crackers, and some fruit snacks.

Oops.

Then Reed wanted to go sit on the front porch. So that's what we did. He decided the dirt from the flower bed would look better on the sidewalk and showed me the gourds that "Mama made."

When we went back inside, Reed found a package of glow sticks. "Open, Ashy."

"No, I don't think we need those now," Jennifer said before aintie could do Reed's bidding. "We have to wait until it's dark to open those."

But Reed was not to be deterred.

"Open, Ashy," he repeated.

"We have to wait until it's dark, baby," I said.

He grabbed my hand again. This time he led me to his bedroom. He shut the door, turned off the light, and said again, "Open, Ashy."

All I could do was laugh. This two-and-a-half-year-old figured out a way to make it dark so we could open his glow sticks. After all, no one had said where it had to be dark.

"Well...um...it has to be dark outside," I stammered. "We have to turn the sun off first."

"Turn sun off, Ashy."

I could do nothing but laugh again. And the only comeback I had was, "It's too high. I can't reach it. We have to wait for God to turn it off."

I don't know that he really wanted to accept that answer, but a Jolly Rancher took his mind off it for a while.