My son

The child will be lucky if he lives to turn three.

His latest stunt (I strongly suspect he has a bad case of "I'm two") is, when I set his dinner down in front of him, to eat two bites, and then saunter off into the living room. My original thought was hey, he's being social, I'll have something to eat with him.

Yeah, that didn't work.

So, I thought hey, I won't establish a precise mealtime- when he's hungry, he'll ask for food, and if he's hungry enough, he'll actually eat chicken instead of continuing to beg for cookies or crackers instead.

Yeah, that didn't work.

So, two nights ago, Darrel and I turned off the TV and put away all his toys. We then each sat down to read...ignoring Frank completely. I think we bored him to death, because he eventually did decide to eat that night.

Tonight, I was trying to get a couple of things done, waited for him to request food, etc...and he wouldn't eat. When I took his plate away, and turned off the TV ("I want Elmo!") he started in with a temper tantrum. I mean, full-blown, sobbing hysterically. I even hauled him upstairs and threw him in his crib for a time-out for a couple of minutes...mostly so I wouldn't strangle him.

I called my mother in law. "Talk me out of beating my son," I told her. I had to repeat this, twice, because the subject of the fantasy beating was still sobbing hysterically in the background ("But I NEED Elmo!!" I NEED COOKIES!"). (For what it's worth, MIL agreed with me that Frank is in fact behaving like he's two.)

Darrel got home an hour after the whole fiasco began. Frank immediately ran over to him and started wailing again. Darrel, thankfully, is quite perceptive, and he looked at me sitting on the couch, and noted the daggers shooting out of my eye sockets towards the boy. He then narrowed his eyes at the boy and asked him why he wasn't eating his dinner.

Frank then flopped down on the floor and began sobbing in earnest once again.

He went to bed with very little dinner in him this evening, for the second night in a row.

Our only concern with allowing this to happen is that we don't want to be awakened at 3am by a hungry child.

After all this, I am amazed by two things:
1. That anyone, after having all the "fun" of one child, actually decides to have a second. I mean, we got into this not really knowing just how much "fun" this all is, but after one, you know!
2. That any child ever actually makes it to see the age of three.