My youngest is eight years old and would rather not ever pick up a pencil to write anything. I had struck gold at Christmas when a pack of greeting cards arrived in the mail and he was inspired to sit down and send cards to his friends. He filled them out on his own and had a wonderful time.

Since then it has been a challenge to get him to do any writing without an enourmous amount of fussing and complaining. There is generally much crying and wailing and gnashing of teeth. It is quite tiresome. He is such a smart little guy, but really not interesting in putting too much down on paper.

He has the goal of becoming a chef and is always making something in the kitchen and looking at my cookbooks. The idea came to him to write down his recipes that he tries so as to have a nice collection for himself.

Immediately I went out and bought a composition book for him and low and behold, he is writing and copying his favorite recipes, makes changes to them to make them into originals and has started his cookbook.

I am very excited about this. For all of my efforts I cannot take credit for this project.....but I am learning from it.