Fruit Theif

Now I have always had one rule in my home when it comes to food and my kids... If they would like something to eat, they must ask - UNLESS its from the fruit bowl.
They never have to ask to eat fruit, not if its 2am in the morning and they are starving, not if its 5 minutes before dinner and not if its straight after dinner. They can eat from the fruit bowl anytime of the day.
Well, having a special needs child sometimes means bending some rules. Tyler suffers from gross motor delay and functions much slower than a normal child of his age. For so long we never had to child proof the house or move anything out of the way because Tyler just couldn't reach or even try. Now at almost two years old, my little man has finally found his feet and what they can do for him. First it was reaching up, on knees, to the coffee table to drink his sisters Milo dregs, then he learn't how to pull himself up to standing at the computer and turns it on and off. Last week it was the telly so he could poke his friends from 'In the night Garden', but this week its the fruit bowl!
I love to watch him crawl (well bunny hop)up to the cabinet where the fruit bowl lives, to watch him scuttle up to standing, a quick look to see if anyone if watching, to see his little hands picking a big juicy apple and then crawling around the corner to eat his treasure where no one could see. Then to hear "mmmmmmm" as he munches away, and a little thud as he decides that three little bites is more than enough and he throws the rest of the apple away. But when he goes back to the fruit bowl for seconds, thats where I draw the line and have to put it out of reach, peeling, washing and cutting up his first steal for him to finish!
Last week it was a mandarin. I let him go with it, to see how he would react to the peel. He took a little bite, and with a distasteful look, swallowed the peel and used his little pudgy fingers to work the rest open, pulling out each segment and eating them one by one. He even pulled out any stray seeds from his mouth. And all that was left was the perfect little skin with one little bite hole in it.
For me, this is a great achievement, to show me that his little brain is working at statagy and solution. Tyler doesn't have a 'lable' and we have been told that we will only know what he can and can't do as he grows, so little things like stealing from the fruit bowl makes this Mumma a very happy one.