Writing books, following in her uncle's footsteps, etc . . .

A's new "thing" is "making books" awhile ago (around Thanksgiving) each of the girls made a book by drawing a pictures on pieces of papers, then having me write the story they dictated onto the pages, and then we stapled them together. In the pre-Christmas cleaning, A "found" hers, and has been having us read it as one of her bedtime stories semi-regularly since then. So then a few days ago she made another one and the last couple times Daddy has read either of them (or both of them) at bedtime he's commented on A being an "author & illustrator" so today A made yet another book (this one is about armadillos) and told me, as I was writing down the story for her, "Daddy says I'm an illustrator, so I guess I have to make lots of books now"

One of the stories we read for our devotion time this morning was the story of Mary & Martha. The girls were very concerned about Martha needing more help, and who was going to fix the food if Jesus said Martha shouldn't and why didn't he just HELP HER! So then this evening out of the blue, A started talking about it AGAIN, and decided that Martha should have made a "special treat" by finding all the fruit she had and cutting it up and mixing it in a bowl, and putting it the microwave to see what happens. I pointed out that they didn't have microwaves back then so A decided she could have just cooked it over the fire. Then she told me she thought WE should try that sometime. . . I tried to talk her out of the microwave step, but she insisted that was what made it "new" . . . sigh . . . I'm suddenly having flashbacks to some of the culinary "creations" my brother treated us to when he was a kid . . .

L's taking her play "cooking" to a new level (for them), where she wants it to be more realistic. So she asks how to make something and then goes through the steps of making it, using her toy food & dishes. Tonight she made scrambled eggs, vegetable soup and then, when A informed her that she doesn't like vegetable soup, L decided she needed to make mushroom soup, so we found the toy mushrooms & put them in one of the canisters to create the "can of mushroom soup" and then she poured "milk" and the "can of soup" into a pan & stirred it while it cooked.