The Negotiator

People have told me that Joshua is surely going to grow up to be a lawyer or a negotiator or something. He is always trying to bargain with me. If I do this, will you do that? It's not sneaky or conniving or even seemingly calculated. He's just seeing what he can get away with. For example, the other day I asked him to clean up his room before he could read some new books I had pulled out. First he asked if could please read the books, THEN clean up his room afterward. I said, no, he had to clean up first. So then he asked if he could just read one book, then clean up. I said no, he had to clean up first. Then he proceeded to ask if he could clean up half of his room and read half of the books, then clean up the rest of his room and read the rest of the books. Amazing. How does he come up with this stuff? In the end, I told him no, he had to clean up first.