A little pyromania goes a long way

Tonight, Petunia, Dash and I celebrated au pair Maria's 21st birthday by throwing a dinner party with June, Wally and Beaver Cleaver.  It was a fantastic meal, all homemade: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, peas, salad (thanks, June!), fudge and Carvel ice cream cake for dessert (ok, so that was homemade by Carvel).  We will probably all still be stuffed tomorrow, except for Dash, who, as ever, refused to eat a bite of anything.

It is now an irrefutable fact that Dash goes on hunger strikes when he knows his father won't be home that night.  (The Guv is in California hopefully finding us a house.)

I was sure that seeing his beloved friends, the Cleaver boys, devouring their dinners would be enough to inspire him to want to eat enough to grow to be big like them.  Instead, Dash spent most of the meal pouring Virgil's Root Beer on his shirt on purpose -- that is, when he wasn't taking big gulps of it and burping loudly.  He refused even his beloved homemade mashed potatoes.   And let me just tell you that when I spend half an hour peeling potatoes to make his favorite food (even if it is for Maria's birthday), I don't take rejection kindly.

Of course, he did eat most of his piece of ice cream cake, but that won't exactly keep his belly full enough to let me sleep through the night.

After the party ended and we were preparing to head upstairs to bed, I tried one last time to offer Dash food again.  He rejected everything from waffles to pancakes to bananas to oatmeal... all usual favorites.  Then, he spied a spent candle lying in the cake box.  He grabbed it, plunked it in the Quaker Oatmeal Breakfast Cookie from his goodie bag, and demanded a light.

So, I did what any savvy mom would do, and I made a deal.  "Sure, Dash, you can blow out the candle... but first, you have to take one bite of that cookie."  And he did.  I lit the candle, he sang the Happy Birthday to You version where everyone lives in a zoo and stinks, and he blew it out.  And asked "again?"  For every bite of cookie, which became every bite of Yo Baby yogurt, that he took, I lit the candle, he sang his song, he blew it out, he asked for more.

At the end, with only a bite of cookie remaining and all of the yogurt gone, he announced that he was all done.  "But I like fire, mama!" he added.

Pyromania at 3... hmm, I think I'll work on that later.  Tomorrow, though, Dash will get a big bowl of oatmeal for breakfast with a candle in it.  I never thought that access to fire would trump access to father, but hey, the hunger strike's over (tonight, anyway).  I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep.