_{The Pterodactyl will be five in a couple of weeks, but he’s having trouble outgrowing the terrible twos.}

_{His tantrums have become legendary, although his teachers claim he’s the sweetest, most disciplined child to ever walk the earth.}

_{He can be. And then he can beat the shit out of the garage door with a golf club, empty all of the drawers in his dresser, and rip to shreds the adorable paper pumpkin he drew for me. And call me stupid. And he’s freakishly strong and has broken through two different locks we’ve installed on his door to assist with time-outs.}

_{But I had a revelation about my little boy the other day. My friend Sahmmy (www.sahmmy.com) and I took our combined five kids to a craft fair where they could make their own art projects like painted shell necklaces and bandana bracelets. The first thing we did was paint rocks. The Pterodactyl picked a huge rock, which he painted green. Then he wiped all the paint off and painted it brown. Then he wiped all the paint off again and painted it blue, and decided it was Pluto. That was the last cute thing he did for quite some time.}

_{He freaked out because the cotton candy was pink instead of blue. He took the Diet Coke out of my hand, poured it onto the grass and stomped on the can. He ran away from me into the crowd three times. He told me I was a bad, bad mama and he hated me. He screeched it, actually. He threw trash on the ground. He begged me to hold him, then threw himself to the ground when I picked him up.}

_{I wish I could say that went on for a good 20 minutes. But it was more like an hour and a half.}

_{Finally, exhausted, he collapsed under a tree that happened to be next to where the Jacksonville Jaguars cheerleaders (The Roar!!!) were helping children decorate sugar cookies. He dragged himself over, slathered an enormous cookie with an inch of icing, and ate every bit of it.}  

_{And the devil disappeared. Totally. Sahmmy and I were left slack-jawed. He held his little sister’s hand. He kissed me. He thanked his little friend for coming.}

 _{“I bet he’s hypoglycemic,” Sahmmy said.}

_{Maybe. But I think the problem is that I haven’t been feeding him.}

_{Now, I know this sounds bad. Really bad. But hear me out. The Diva, now 8, can go three days on a spoonful of peanut butter and a bag of Cheetos. Plus, when she’s hungry she just dives into the pantry and inhales stuff for a few minutes until she’s full. She also hoards fruit roll-ups in her bunk bed drawer. And the little Tyrant just eats Easy Mac and Goldfish and whatever candy she finds at the bottom of my purse.}

_{And Husband and I eat gross stuff like veggie burger wraps and Muscle Milk Shakes with artificial sweetner.}

_{So when I think about it, we might have gotten into a habit of… um … skipping meals. I suspect this is contraindicated for 4-year-old boys. I do ask them if they’re hungry, but if they’re busy pretending they’re homeless and living in the garage with old linens as beds, they’ll say no, they’re not hungry, and I believe them. Or throw them some chips.}

_{For the past two days, I’ve been force-feeding the boy every two hours. He is sucking down food like a vacuum. Yogurt, smoothies, chips, rice and beans, pasta, waffles, popcorn, eggs, watermelon – it’s like he hasn’t really eaten for weeks, which I fear is entirely possible. He hasn’t had a single tantrum.}

_{That’s not to say his behavior has turned stellar. He still retains his Pterodactylian quirks. He doesn’t like any brown spots on his omelet so I had to surreptitiously turn his bites of egg inside out last night so he would eat them. When I told him he was doing a great job on his cartwheels, he insisted I reword it so that I said his cartwheels were great. He continues to whack his little sister in the head whenever it’s convenient. But when he ripped out yet another lock Hot Firefighter Husband had molly-bolted onto his bedroom door, he simply smirked about his accomplishment and returned to his room to serve his time-out sentence. That’s all normal boy stuff, right? I mean, answer me here. Right?}

_{At any rate, it’s stuff I can handle. I think I’ve got my darling boy back. Tonight when I was snuggling with him, he started singing Britney Spears’ “Womanizer” and was giggling so hard he almost fell out of bed. And I thought to myself, “I’m so glad I started feeding him again.”}