too smart for my own good

I like the title of my post today.  It sounds like I'm talking about myself.  But alas, I am not.  Jakob is the one that is too smart for my own good.  Sometimes he does things that we don't expect him to do, and it makes us proud knowing that he is a smart boy, and other times he does things that indicate he is not just smart, but perhaps an evil genius with plans to overthrow us.  He likes to vacuum.  He knows how to turn the vacuum on and pushes it around, back-and-forth like Sarah.  He also knows how to turn on the dishwasher, unlock it when it is done, and he puts the silverware away in the right drawer, but not quite the right order.  He's not tall enough to see, which he inherited from me.  He knows how to turn a movie on on his iPod, break the iPod, and then fix it when we are at a loss for what he has done.  He picks up many things he sees, and being a quiet, loner type, he sits and figures other things out.  All of these habits are all well and good.  Counting Sarah, it gives us two people in the house that like to clean.

But like the Force, there is a dark side to his intelligence.  He can be cunning and deceptive.  I put him in his bed last night, and he wasn't too thrilled to be going to sleep.  Sometimes he lays right down, and other times he throws a fit.  I guess that's normal.  Last night, as he was throwing a fit, I decided to stay and play with him to calm him down before leaving his room.  I picked up his blanket and put it over my head, and I asked, "Where's Daddy?"  He kind of laughed while still crying as he pulled the blanket off my head.  I did it a second time, and this time, he laughed a little bit and stopped crying.  The third time I did it, he laughed pretty hard.  Since it was working, and I'm kind of a one trick pony, I went for four straight times.  I put his blanket over my head, asked where I was, and instead of having the blanket ripped from my head, I heard scooting.  He had timed me like a batter times a pitcher.  He lulled me into a false sense of peekaboo security.  I put the blanket over my head, and he knew it would stay there until he pulled it off.  He felt unguarded and tried to get away.  Sadly for him, it's a toddler bed, and there's only one quick way in or out, and it was just to my right.  I caught him in the act.  I put my right hand up at the last second, and he crashed into it.  He was stuck in the bed.

I will admit to being proud of him.  It was a fine display of intelligence.  I laughed out loud when I realized what he was doing.  I hugged him, told him I loved him, and put him back in his bed.  It also worried me, though.  I suspect our hands will be more and more full in the years to come.  He really is and will be too smart for my own good.