At Long Last Home (& then some!)

I think I set this blog up amply with yesterday’s post, so I’ll jump right into the pictures.

We begin in late January, with Maddie and Trine still in Glostrup Hospital, and Daddy making Molli Malou watch the inauguration. No political indoctrination of any kind, just joy at the peaceful of transfer of power.

But from the pictures, you’d think Molli Malou was already declaring herself politically in direct opposition to Daddy. (I expect as much, having been an avowed communist in high school myself.)

Although maybe you could interpret this as “Don’t take a picture of me now, Daddy, I’m too sad watching George W. Bush step down!”

But she was enthralled by the new president, whom she to this day continues to call simply “the new man.”

I’m still not a fan of the new man myself, and may never be, but the historic flavor of the event — a half-black president taking the reins of a country where in living memory a man of his color couldn’t order a burger at a diner or sit toward the front of a bus in some states without risking a beating or worse — cannot be overlooked. Molli Malou can some day look at this photo the way I look at the photo of my own father having waken me up to see a man walking on the moon (with the singular difference that, well, this photo actually exists!).

Nana’s gift blankets for Maddie and Dolly arrived, and Molli Malou was thrilled to get Dolly bundled in the new blankie right away!

It was this bath that made me realize it was time to get a bigger tub for poor Molli Malou. She outgrew this one months ago, it’s just that I wasn’t as attentive as I should have been or I would have noticed sooner. Look at the poor thing!

Now, on to Maddie. Here is her room in Glostrup — wing 5, 6th floor, room 4. As you can see, she had all the space a little girl could want! (Trine really never did get comfy in the “mommy chair” though.)

And here she is on the day we took her home, slumbering peacefully, never having spent more than 20 minutes outside a hospital in her little life (and those 20 minutes were in an ambulance going from one hospital to another):

What’s that, you say? Where are the tubes, the wires, the electrodes? All gone. At long, long, last. . . all gone.

And it’s finally time to take her home.

And hey presto! She’s home!

One mere week into the Obama presidency, and our daughter is freed from the confinement of Glostrup Hospital!

Molli Malou colors her hair in honor of the homecoming!

And it is Molli Malou who gives Maddie her very first stroll. (Yes, really.)

And Maddie is so thrilled… she barfs.

(NB. She also barfs when she’s not thrilled, and when she’s happy, and when she’s sad, and when she’s asleep, and…)

But when she’s not barfing… what an angel!

Three angels!

Zoom in!

More, more! Closeup!

Big sister and little sister — Big M and Little M — are getting closer every day.

While you’re on the blog, go ahead and click back to the summer of 2004 and see if some of these don’t look familiar. Is Maddie really our second daughter… or a clone?

There you have it. Now we’re caught up to about Monday of this week.

There are even more pictures waiting to be liberated here for your perusal… but operating on about 20 free minutes a day, I can’t promise to have them posted for at least the next few days. And sadly I only now realize that the snowman pictures I mentioned yesterday are included in the next batch.

Something to look forward to, then, along with pics of that first head lift! (Which was encored just moments ago on the living room floor, so it was no fluke!)