The Grabnabber and The Gummie Worms

This kid of ours...  We've had a bit of a challenging week from a behavior perspective.  Finn is much more mobile, and hence demands a lot more attention.  That's the only thing I can think of that's different, because it seems like Brady has started doing the whole 'act naughty to get attention' thing.  But, I have to hand it to him, he's clever!  Sometimes I don't want to punish him because secretly I'm proud of the things his little brain comes up with.  Today was one of those times.

This morning, I asked him if he could run down to the laundry room and get me a roll of paper towels.  I explained that they were right next to the fridge, but after several minutes, I heard him say to himself, 'Nope...no paper towels here.'  I went down to see what was going on and immediately recognized why he hadn't found the paper towels.  Apparently the Grabnabber had gotten his attention prior to the towels.  You know, it's one of those trash picker-upper stick things like workers use to get trash out of the ditch.  Brandon bought it for me when I was pregnant with Brady because he thought I'd really appreciate his attempt at humor when my belly was too be to bend over, but that's an aside.  Brady thinks it's a pretty cool thing.  Nothing more happened this morning as we had to leave the house shortly after all this.

Then tonight, we got home before Brandon, and I noticed when Brandon walked in that I didn't hear the usual chorus of, 'DDAAAADDDDDDYYYYYY' like I usually do when he walks in.  When Brandon came upstairs, he asked where Brady was.  I told him I thought he was downstairs, but was surprised he hadn't seen him already.  Brandon grinned and said that he noticed the light was on in the laundry room and the door was closed.  He went down to check it out.  As he opened the door, Brady said, 'don't come in!'  I have to backtrack for a second.  This same scenario presented itself a couple weeks ago, and when I found Brady in the laundry room, his mouth was full to the brim.  I asked if he was sneaking Gummy Worms, and though his mouth was so full he could barely talk, he gave me his best little brown-eyed look and said, 'Yes...I'm sorry mom.'  I told him he wasn't in trouble because I was proud that he hadn't lied to me.  In order to avoid this situation in the future, I simply placed the Gummy Worms on the top shelf of our storage unit.

I know you know where I'm going with this...tonight he used the Grabnabber, that he remembered from this morning, to procure the Gummy Worms off the top shelf, and was now enjoying his prize.  I just had to laugh when Brandon told me!  The fact that he had figured out where the Gummy Worms were, and then figured out that he could get them with the Grabnabber, and then was actually coordinated enough to do it!?  What are we going to do with this kid!?