Cookies High and Low

She probably would have put just about anything in there if I had let her. But she sat so patiently, waiting for me to hand her the next spoon or cupful of this and that. When it came time to add the raisins, though, she was surprisingly very stingy. At first she only wanted to put 4 in, but I convinced her that she would be helping to devour these little morsels of goodness with the rest of us, and eventually I think she got the point that the raisins weren't going to be wasted.

Last night we had kind of a different eating experience with her. She woke up from her nap at around 6:00 p.m. and informed us that she would not be eating anything for the rest of the evening except for jell-o. This is how she did it: After she refused to eat her salad and pasta alfredo, she asked to be let down from her chair and go to the couch. Well, a few minutes later I had prepared myself a bowl of jell-o and left it on the counter momentarily to see what it was Isaac was trying to tell me, then I turned around to find the jell-o about 2 1/2 feet lower than it had been, trying to leave the kitchen in the hands of a little thief.

She does this every once in a while. Like the time I was so intently crocheting on the couch that the only definite fact in my head about Sophia was that she was in the same room as I. Upon hearing a "crunch, crunch, crunch" I looked up to see her enjoying a few chocolate hazelnut sticks that Isaac had left on the coffee table. I took them away and said a cheery, "All done!" and put them up on the counter in the kitchen. A few minutes later my work was again interrupted by this same girl asking me to please help her open the container of lemon gumdrops in her hand. Where she got them, I don't know, but I put them up in one of the cupboards and continued crocheting. Not 10 stitches later did I hear the all too familiar "crunch-crunching" coming this time from the kitchen. Sophia had taken it upon herself to climb up into one of the stools (which I didn't know she was capable of at the time) and partake in a few more of these delicious little chocolatey sticks. When she realized she was caught, she managed to shove two more in her mouth before I could get the container away. And then do you know what she said? "All done!"

My mom tells this one story about how when I was a little younger than Sophia, she saw me walk past her with one of my books into the pantry. She then saw me come back out - no book in hand - and walk straight to where my books were to grab another, and another, and another. Finally, she followed me into the pantry and watched me put the next book on the stack of previously carried books on the floor, step up onto it, and reach up to see if I was close enough to the cookie jar to be able to reach one. She said I still had about 50 books to go before I ever would have reached it. What determination kids have, eh? Especially when it comes to sweets. What I've never asked her before, though, was whether or not I got a cookie for my efforts. Well, Mom?