Another Bocanegra Birthday

Jacob turned 10 on Saturday, August 15th.

I can believe it because he's been trying to catch up to his big sisters ever since he was born and often seems older than he is to me.

Like a fine piece of cheese, He just keeps getting better with age.

It's no secret he was a difficult toddler: punching his nursery leader in the face, giving everyone not in his immediate family the dirtiest one-eyed glare he could muster, telling Samantha he hated her~ repeatedly. He was a difficult first grader: kicking the principal while she tried to pull him out of the classroom closet where he was holed up, chucking water bottles out into the classroom & running out of his Aunt Abby's house while she was tending him and hiding under the neighbors car 2 houses down, refusing to go to his room when in trouble, running away from me at church stating he was going home whether I liked it or not.

I did not like it. Any of it.

At age 10 the difficult child is gone and has been replaced by a really, really great kid. He still has a temper that needs to be checked now and again but works hard at having self-control and is master of his temper more than it is master of him these days. He will always have a strong will that wants what it wants but he is learning empathy and patience and cooperation. He is also grateful and kind and helpful and really fun to be around.

I'm getting all teary as I write and that was unexpected. I suppose I still feel overwhelmed sometimes at how far we've come. While I have loved him immensely every step of the way and have always known the wonderful things about him it was so overshadowed at times with frustration and fear and anxiety and questions! Questions that kept me up at night and made me cry. Would I be able to help him? Would there always be this battle of wills? Am I handling this the right way? Will other people see the good in him? What am I doing wrong? Am I the right person for this job?

This year for his birthday we just planned a family day together. He had specific plans for his cake. A Dark Castle. Last week he made a diagram for me that had a legend at the bottom detailing what candies/cookies were to be used for the battlements and turrets, etc.

He chose our chocolate Crazy cake recipe. The frosting we usually use has to be put on while the cake is warm so I knew I'd have to find another way to go. There's no stacking warm crazy cakes. We found 3 graduated sizes of rectangle plans that were deemed acceptable and made 2 batches of crazy cake. The frosting was more like a thick glaze that you could pour and smooth. I found it in a culinary mystery book I was reading the week before that had the crazy cake recipe with 2 frosting recipes, the usual one that has to be put on a warm cake and and this new one called "Never Fail Fudge Frosting" that can be applied to a warm or cold cake.

We had mixed reviews on the end result. I think it was a little too dark chocolate tasting for some of the kids. Maybe we should have used milk chocolate chips instead of Semi-sweet. I liked it. It smelled divine. It was easy to use too, we coated the sugar cones with it for turrets so they would be the same color as the cake and it definitely made the process much faster than using a traditional frosting.

We had fun putting it together and I can't tell you how many times he came up to me during the course of his birthday and laid his head on my shoulder, put his arm around me and squeezed while saying "Thank you so much mom, everything is perfect!"

His dad took him to Nickelcade for some individual time and when he got back he had leftover nickels and asked if I'd take him to Macey's so he could buy an ice cream cone with his leftover nickels. Rachel came too and he bought them both ice cream while I did some shopping.

We blew out candles and opened presents and just had a nice day.

If any of you reading have a difficult child let me say this;

pray

love

pray

complement the good things you see, no matter how small it may seem. Look hard, find something. And if it's too hard to say out loud at first, write it on a sticky note and stick it their headboard so they'll see it when they go to bed or wake up. Even if you can say it out loud, sometimes the sticky note is good because they can see it over and over and remember what's great about them.

hope

love

pray

ask for help

look forward with faith

Pray

Love

you'll do fine......