The Little Be.

One of Luke's favorite books is  The Little Pea, an amusing story about a pea who does not want to eat all of his dinner, which just happens to be candy. (That's what you eat for dinner every night when you are a pea.) Eventually he finishes all his candy with much disgust and, as promised, gets his dessert...

Which just happens to be a plate of spinach. YUM!

Sorry to ruin the ending for you.

Tonight I made an almost entirely green dinner. We had roasted broccoli, a fresh watercress salad with lemon dressing and diced avocado, green beans with onion crunchies, Swiss Stake, and a plate of garlicky sauteed spinach that I left on a small plate for myself, you know, because I really like lemony, garlicky spinach. Luke ate about half of his dinner and proclaimed he was done. The boy was so far from being finished. Eyeing the extra plate of spinach, I had an idea.

"Hey Luke, don't you want dessert tonight?"

"Yes!"

"If you want dessert, then you need to finish your dinner."

"How many bites?"

"Twenty."

(I'm into big numbers when it comes to finishing food. None of this one or two bite nonsense. Can you tell I'm an American? I am. But I'm not obese or slightly overweight...anymore! Lay off, I "just" had a baby.)

"Okay."

So he ate half an avocado and about 10 green beans. "Hmm...I wonder if this will actually work," I thought to myself. He has been saying, "Maaaaaaaaammmm" with that reprimanding tone quite a bit these days in response to many of my ideas, especially my best ones.

He continued to eat until he met our goal.

"Finish all of it!" he said with a mouthful of food.

"LUKE! GUESS WHAT YOU GET FOR DESSERT?" I tried to sound as enthusiastic as possible.

"What?"

"SPINACH!!!!!!" I squealed. "Just like Little Pea!"

"Oooooooh!!!!"

To my surprise, he ate all of it and proclaimed, "I lick my dessert plate clean."

There was nothing to say to this except, "Yum. Yum. Extra Yum."

So we did, together, with smiles in our voices and twinkles in our eyes.