The Dessert is not Worth It!

Neither of my "big" boys are big fans of dinner.  It doesn't matter if we eat PB&J or meat and potatoes - they eat very little of it.  I think they really just aren't that hungry most nights, so I normally only give them small portions and hope they can get it all down with plenty of milk to fill in the hollow spots.  If they eat well (without whining, complaining, refusing to eat, taking over an hour, gagging, hiding food somewhere, or needing too much actual feeding from mom) they get some sort of dessert, like a popsicle or a bowl of yogurt or a little ice-cream.  

Well, tonight, I went out on a limb and made something new for dinner.  It had both things they normally love and things they  normally detest so I was hopeful it would all even out in the end.  It started out fine, but they lost momentum about 10 minutes in.  After 15 minutes, they had completely run out of steam and were coming up with all sorts of fun things to distract them from the goal, which was finishing their dinner.  Ben was telling stories and jokes.  Mitchell was sitting backwards, upside-down, feet in the air, food in a pile on the table... After a bit of this, we decided they only had a few minutes left to finish, or no popsicles.  With only a couple minutes to go, Ben furiously started shoveling the food in to make it under the time limit and get the prize.  Well, last bite made it in it time, but it only took another second for that last bite...plus all the rest of them to come right back up!  It looked like he threw up more than he had originally eaten!  In order to get that popsicle, he force fed himself most of his food in only a few seconds and it all ended up on his chin, shirt, pants, and my dining room chair.  Throwing up is a traumatic experience, so I think maybe we did not accomplish anything positive tonight.  He didn't get his dessert, and we didn't get him to actually keep down any dinner.  In the end, he didn't even care about getting his dessert.  He just wanted to get away from the scene of the crime.