When the boy wouldn't eat his dinner tonight, we put on our bright "Oh well!" faces, let him down, and cleared the dishes. But a few hours later we broke down and heated up one of those Costco corn dogs his grandmother introduced him to over the weekend. What are we going to do? Send him to bed without dinner?

"YES!," all the experts shout. "Send him to bed without dinner! He'll eat if he's hungry. He won't starve. He's just exerting the only control he owns." Every single thing I've read explains this in terms even the most clueless mother can understand. My friends with older children nod their heads in sympathy, my mother gently prods, the pediatrician is adamant, and my favorite parenting sites concur: the food battle is a battle that you, the stymied and confused parent, are going to LOSE. So why bother? HE'S NOT GOING TO STARVE!

My kids hate food most of the time. They like cookies and pretzels, Red Dye #4, and sugar in any form but food is not high on their priority list. It seems like the longer it takes me to cook something and the more delicious it is to a person with tastebuds more discerning than a goat’s, the less the kids can tolerate its presence in their mouths.

It's taken me over ten months, but I've finally admitted to myself that my daughter has an attitude problem. I'm this close to calling it a Temper. A disposition so persnickety and demanding can hardly amount to anything else, yet I've been glossing over the obvious since her birth.

"She just knows what she wants," I'd say to my husband, whisking Molly away from his frustrated attempts to stuff a bottle into her mouth.

Tonight I made spaghetti carbonara for dinner. Spaghetti carbonara is, quite possibly, the most delicious non-dessert food in the universe. It's the main course of my last meal menu and my standby when I used to visit my parents in Italy. (They don't live there anymore. TRAVESTY.) I haven't been eating things like pasta (and bread and potatoes and rice and every other delicious thing in order to drop ten pounds by my thirtieth birthday- SIGH) but the low-glycemic pasta was on sale and I had bacon hanging out in the fridge and what can I say? I wanted to live dangerously! Or at least high-in-fat-ly. I thought it was fantastic, too. My best go at this recipe EVER.

My two-year-old, however, was not impressed. He slowly lifted his fork to his mouth, tasted his noodles and promptly let them fall off his tongue and back into his bowl. He then looked at me as if to say, "Nice try. Where is the cake?"

Dear Mother's Day,

It appears I cannot give my mother a nice scarf or a good book or a lunch out -- as the mother of her grandchildren I am required to be CRAFTY. Please note, Mother's Day, I do not have a crafty bone in my body. All previous attempts at craftiness ended up in the trash, down the disposal or burned in the fireplace. I feel this obligatory handmade grandchild gift sets too high a standard, especially since the grandchildren have yet to even master a crayon. Have pity on me, Mother's Day. What about a nice geranium, hmm?

Nervously,
Maggie