The Magic of Cocoa

In all fairness, I should begin this post by confessing there is no recipe attached to tonight’s entry.  But if you are craving something with a cocoa base, pull up my Pinterest boards and choose the one I have simply titled “Chocolate.”  You’re sure to find something yummy there.

                 

Okay, now that I’ve cleared the air…

We have been working with kiddo for some time to try to get him to write on his own.  He loves to spell.  He loves to ask about word meanings, spellings and pronunciations.  He loves to tell us what he’d like us to spell and have us write it down.  But when it comes to him sitting down to “sound spell” whatever he wants to write about, he balks.  Every…single…time.  <le sigh>

So we don’t push it.  We know he is getting time in school to practice (though he often refuses and just sits there) and we offer the opportunity at home, but he usually refuses.  And, before you think I should pull out my “Commando Mom” skills and go all hard-ass on him, please know that our therapist thinks this is the right approach for us to take with him at this time.  We do, too. 

Kiddo already is trying to re-adjust to his still-somewhat-new-to-him classroom after the holiday break and he’s had a rough week.  I know I’ve mentioned previously how tenacious he is when he doesn’t want to do something, so I would simply be adding more stress to his already-stressed body by pushing the issue.  So I don’t.  I try to make writing fun and catch him off-guard but he usually catches on quickly.

And yet, he surprised me again.

Tonight, I was baking a “Double-Chocolate Kahlua Cake” to take to a retreat I’ll be attending tomorrow, while kiddo was getting his jammies on.  He really loves baking with me, so I wasn’t surprised when he came skipping out to the kitchen and pulled up his step-stool, asking if he could help.  At that point, I was mostly done; but I found a couple of things for him to do so he could participate.

As I was finishing scraping the frosting out of the bowl, I realized I had used up the last of the cocoa and mentioned I needed to put it on the grocery list – but I was busy trying to clean up the messy bowl and counter.  Just by chance, I asked if he’d write the word on the list since my hands were all wet and he agreed!

He asked how to spell it, and so we sounded it out together…”c-o-c-o-a”…as he carefully wrote each letter in succession.  I told him how proud of him I was, that he had agreed to help me, and spelled the word in his own writing.  I thought he’d reply about how pleased he was, too; instead, he replied, “C-o-c-o-a.  Ha, ha, ha – that’s a really funny-sounding way to spell cocoa.”

Chalk up another small victory, in part, to chocolate.  That’s my kiddo!