Out-smarted by my 3 year old!

Cole uses words to rationalize and reason what he is asked to do/not do and sometimes it just amazes me how his mind works this way. He's always out-smarting the situation and thinking literally. If you know him, you've seen or heard him do this. For example if he's holding something in his hand and I ask him to help me pick up some toys, he can be heard to say that he can't help because his hands are already full of something else. Well yes, they are (technically)-- Another example is when I once threatened to spank his bum and he said "Mom, you can't, I'm sitting down". Well, I guess he's right, I couldn't do it until he stood up and I could then reach his back end. One frequent example of twisting my words is how he likes to wear his boots around the house, but my rule is no shoes on the carpet. Well, obviously "they aren't shoes". And if I catch him walking around, he will quickly drop to his knees and show that he's "crawling" and not walking. We recently went thru this and when I knew he was headed towards the tiled entry to find his boots, I reminded him that I didn't want him walking on the carpet with his boots. Obviously, he found a way around that by not walking on them the conventional way...

I guess I need to choose my words more carefully so that my 3 year old does not continue to out-smart me!! It's starting to get embarrassing, but thank goodness for the humor in the situations; he keeps me entertained!!