"There's white stuff on the ground and everywhere," Pauly told Pippa as soon as he was in the door.
"It snowed last night," Pippa explained patiently, as only an experienced, older doll can.
"It's really cold stuff," Pauly added, looking out at the clear blue sky and the rooftops covered with white snow. "Jeffy said it was made of snowflakes."
"That's because it's made of frozen water," Pippa said. "Mandy explained it to me. We can have a lot of fun in the snow, but let's wait until later, when it's a bit warmer outside." Pippa has good eyes. She could see the thermometer outside the window next to the door.
"Come to the kitchen," Pippa suggested. "Jolena is making some hot chocolate for us to pretend to drink. It should be almost ready."
"It snowed last week," Pippa said, as she led Pauly down the hall to the kitchen, "but not as much as last night."
"I guess that was when we went to see Jeffy's grandparents," Pauly said thoughtfully.
"You were gone almost all week," Pippa pointed out. "By the time you came back, the snow was gone.
The two dolls climbed up to where Jolena was working, so they could watch. When the hot chocolate was ready, Jolena poured them each a cup.
"This is good chocolate," Pauly told Jolena.
"Thank you," Jolena replied. Then she asked, "What have you been doing?"
"I came to tell Pippa that I saw when the snow started," Pauly said.
"It was late yesterday afternoon," Pauly told them, "and I looked out the window. Little white specks were coming down from the sky. Jeffy told me they were snowflakes. He says they are like human children; no two are exactly alike."
Pippa nodded. She was glad Jeffy had explained it to Pauly.
"Yes," Jolena said. There are lots of dolls just like me. We're all made exactly the same. I think we're probably different on the inside, though, and we're different from dolls like you, Pauly."
Pauly stopped pretending to drink his hot chocolate while he considered all the other Paul dolls in the world, and wondered what they were like on the inside.
"What do you do in the snow?" Pauly asked then, putting down his cup. "Pippa says it's fun to play in."
"I'll show you some photos," Pippa suggested, putting her cup down, too. "Come upstairs, and we can look at them!"
When the dolls reached the workroom, Pippa got the phone and turned it on. Then she and Pauly sat on the daybed and looked at the photos. "These photos are from last year," she said. "The snow last week was too wet to be much fun and then it melted."
"This," Pippa said, pointing to the first photo, "is where Mandy and I were getting ready to go outside."
"We had to put on some warm clothes," Pippa explained. "I had to wear boots that were too big for me, and we put socks on our hands, because we didn't have mittens."
"We needed to protect our hands," she said, "because we were going to be putting our hands in the snow."
Pauly looked at the photo and then nodded at Pippa. He would need socks for his hands, too, when they went out to play in the snow.
"We made something called snowballs," Pippa explained. "You pick up some snow, push it together and then make it round, like a ball."
"Then we threw the snowballs at each other. Not hard, you know. We didn't want to knock someone's head off."
"We made bigger balls of snow," Pippa continued. "We put them together to make a snowman, but it was really small, so maybe it was really a snow baby."
"Mandy showed me how to lie down in the snow," Pippa went on. "We moved our arms and legs through the snow, up and down."
"Then when we got up, Pippa said, "we could see where we had been. Mandy said those were snow angels. Where we had moved our hands up and down looked like wings."
Pauly thought he would like to do that, too.
"Then the boys brought their sled out," Pippa told him, showing him the next photo The Writer had taken of her sitting on the sled with Freckles. "They pulled the sled around with me on it, and I got to pretend they were horses pulling my sleigh. A sleigh is sort of a very big sled," she explained.
"That looks like fun," Pauly said.
"What's even more fun," Pippa told him, "is when we take the sled to where there's a hill covered with snow. The sled goes down it very fast without anyone pulling it." Then she thought for a moment. "Just wait," she said, "until you see Jolena on skis! She does some amazing tricks, but she practices on the slide in the backyard." Pippa looked until she found a photo of Jolena on her skis in the backyard.
"So you did all this stuff last year," Pauly said. "There was no snow when I came. How often does the snow come?"
Pippa thought for a moment. "Well," she said, " The snow comes in the winter, and winter was over when you got here. It melts whenever the weather warms up, but we will have today to play in it, and it will snow again!"
"Let's see if it's warm enough now!" Pippa exclaimed, jumping up.
Pauly thought about how great it was to have a friend like Pippa! Maybe the snow would be great, too!
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia
"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
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