by the book

   

I saw this great mud pie recipe book here and then here, and I thought it might be just what the girls needed to get them excited about being outside again — they enjoy being outside but are kind of in that end-of-summer we’ve-done-everything-there-is-to-do-outside place.  Sure enough, it’s been inspiring a great deal of fun and encouraging them to do such things as thread twenty blades of grass through twenty buttons and grinding up sticks of chalk and such like.  Here their dolls are being treated to a meal including boiled buttons, chalk shakes, and molded moss salad.  As a bonus, Adeline can now read and pronounce the words hors d’oeuvres.

Since Bea can’t read, she doesn’t get the same satisfaction Adeline does from following a recipe.  She’s more inclined to improvise.  When she suggested adding some mushrooms she’d found to the button soup, Adeline exclaimed, “No, Bea, the book doesn’t say to add those!”  And that, I think, sums up their personalities fairly well.