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Incentive or Bribe? Call it what you like, but my mama didn’t raise a fool. At least not in this department. Boy Wonder has a writing sample that must be mailed off to school by the end of the month and he was having such a hard time facing his final draft. In typical form, he had all the work done long before yesterday with the exception to that neat and clean final copy. Shocking, right? Yeah, not so much. He’s definitely his mother’s child in this regard: he’d rather keep his options open. A finished copy of work means, well, you’re done. We’d rather not start than choose to finish. It’s a gift, really.

He’s been pestering me to bake. Oh, not ME to bake, but to let HIM bake. On his own. “With very little meddling from you” kind of baking. He’s a smart kid, he knows that if he hits me at just the right moment, I’ll say yes. . . and if he doesn’t he’s a big fan of drip marketing. Drip, drip, drip: Oh, ok, you can bake cookies! Evidently, his mother didn’t raise a fool either!

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As to not completely give in, I bargained a compromise: “You write your final draft by 3 and I’ll let you bake cookies.” He’s been taking lessons from his father because he countered, “For the neighbors, too?” S i g h. Right, like I’m going to say, “NO! You can only bake for us.” Ha! So, we made a deal. And darn if the kid didn’t get his end of the bargain done well in advance. Uh, huh… now who’s the smarty-pants?

He chose his recipe, Peanut Butter, and I had him read the directions through twice. He determined in order to have enough left over he would need to double the recipe, so we worked in a little math with fractions. Note to self: Have the boy do this for you from now on. He’s good with math, you’re not! And then he went to work.

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He decided that he wanted to box his cookies and set about making origami boxes for them. Pink boxes with yellow ribbon: feels like Spring! He had quite the rhythm established by the end: scoop cookies, put them in the oven, fold a few boxes, DING!, take cookies out of the oven, repeat! The results were pretty good, too! He’s now our official goto guy for Peanut Butter Cookies.

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I want to go on record here: the ONLY thing I’m responsible for in this whole thing is tying ribbons and donating flowers. Otherwise, this was his from start to finish. Oh, wait… I helped eat the cookies too. ๐Ÿ˜€

As much as he enjoyed the whole baking process, I suspect what he really digs is delivering his goods. He was gone for at least 10 minutes to each house (save one)… I peeked from inside our entry door—watching him chat with the neighbors. They all stood and talked to him, raving about his kindness and inquiring to his day. He’s a really chatty kid and when I asked him why he wanted to do this he said, “Well, I thought it would be a good neighbor thing to do!” A box of Peanut Butter Cookies is a nice bonus for a chat with a sweet 10 year old. And darn, if to the one they didn’t stand there in their doorways being ever so pleasant.

The only real snag was with our neighbor, John, who is a man of few words. He took the cookies and said thanks, but he didn’t enthuse. He was one of Boy Wonder’s last stops, so the lack of enthusiasm was a bit confusing, I think. However, this morning the doorbell rang and there was John bringing our “dish” back. Inside, he had tucked 3 squares of yummy Ghirardelli chocolate and then wrapped it all back up. Apparently, we have very good neighbors!