My youngest daughter, Miss A, is addicted to Cheetos.

The hubby recently came home from Costco lugging in a gigantic box of lunch-sized bags of Cheetos and they have proven to save our parenting rear ends on more than one instance.

Last night instead of being glued to the Disney Channel like slack-jawed zombies (I think all the tween/teen boy hairstyles send out subliminal messages that mesmerize all girls under the age of 10) the girls played outside for a good half hour while I got dinner ready. I set the timer for the oven and I ventured out to weed our flower bed while they played, despite getting attacked by relentless, blood-thirsty mosquitoes. Miss A is really prone to mosquito bites so I checked on her a few times but she didn’t seem to be getting bitten. Of course I conveniently ignored the fact that she kept rolling around in the grass like a hyper puppy because the girls were happily playing and she wasn’t wearing her school clothes.

The hubby came home from work, which was the cue to head in for dinner and Miss A proceeded to scratch her arms and legs as if she were being attacked by a thousand bed bugs.

“I ITCH! I’m ITCHING! I can’t STAND IT! I’m ITCHING!”

There was much wailing and crying and whining and hopping up and down the nanosecond we sat down to the table together as a family and my husband finally had a chance to breathe after a long work day.

But of course.

We ended up coercing Miss A into a quick cool shower because so help me God we were all going to sit down together like a normal civilized family, chigger bites be damned!

Five minutes later she was seated at the table wearing nothing but a hooded towel.

And then I whipped out the Cheetos card as she started to whine again about itching.

“Miss A you can have some Cheetos with dinner if you eat all of your chicken.”

I’ve never seen her quit whining AND quit itching quite so fast.

And that’s how we ended up with a nearly naked 5-year-old eating Cheetos at a very peaceful dinner table.

On a totally unrelated note, I thought ya’ll might get a kick out of reading this article about a man who found Jesus in a Cheeto.

You’re welcome.