All Too Terribly Two

Late last week Molli Malou began complaining about her stomach. “Hurt in tummy,” she would mewl to me. “Ondt i maven,” she complained to Trine. She didn’t eat as much as normal and seemed a little fussier than usual.

She persevered through the weekend, but seemed a ghost of herself Monday morning. We brought her to vuggestue, but I got a call about two hours later: she didn’t seem all that sick, but she’d been complaining about her tummy, acting very lethargic, and when seated at table she kept laying her head down miserably upon it. Maybe I would like to take her home?

I did, whereupon her little tummy ache and fatigue rapidly devolved into a full-blown illness of some kind, including hoarse voice, phlegmy cough, and streaming nostrils.

(As an aside, I’m proud to report that the illness did seem to teach Molli Malou the difference between boogers and snot.)

We kept her home Tuesday and Wednesday, although most of her symptoms seemed to have lifted by Tuesday night. By this (Thursday) morning, she was her usual fireball self, and threw one of her all-time worst tantrums.

But first, before the onset of the illness, I managed to capture some video of Molli Malou properly pedaling a tricycle for the first time in her little life last Wednesday or so: click here to download.

And after you’ve downloaded that little video, go ahead and start downloading this larger one, of Molli Malou putting herself to bed, before you resume reading:

Last Wednesday, Mormor hosted a birthday dinner for her brother, Molli’s great uncle Klaus. Dinner was going to be served well past Molli’s mealtime, so we fed her beforehand. Anticipating the probable difficulties of tending to Molli while the rest of us ate, we had brought along a Teletubbies DVD to entertain her. As dinnertime drew nigh, I loaded it into Mormor’s laptop and hit “play.” Molli scrambled over immediately, her attention captured the moment the sound of the BBC logo sequence emanated from the computer.

We were able to enjoy our dinners unmolested by demands to “watch this!” or “come play!”

Molli was welcomed back to the table for a special dessert from Mormor:

At one point Mormor took Molli in her lap, with Trine beside her, and I thought it was a great opportunity for a three-generation shot. I took about eight pictures. Not only didn’t I get a single one with eye contact from so much as one of the Kammer girls… I didn’t even get a single good one. Still, taken as a small series they’re kind of cute:

So I guess it was Thursday that Molli Malou learned to ride her bike (though of course she cleverly withdrew her feet from the pedals whenever she saw the camera).

Sunday afternoon we went to the zoo. As usual, the first animal we had to see was the polar bear, or isbjørn (“ice bear”). I include it here, as I’m starting to do with so many pictures, less for us than for Molli herself. Molli, this bear was the love of your little life at age 26 months.

Her patience at this tender age is obviously limited, except for three activities: watching herself on video, playing with dough, and gaping at the polar bear.

Seriously.

(See the cranes in the background? They’re building this fantastic new environment for the elephants, who currently live in something like cellblock six. Someday it will be a marvel of the world. People will flock to the Frederiksberg Zoo from all reaches of the galazy just to see the stunning elephant habitat. And you’ll all be able to say, “I knew the Frederiksberg Zoo was cool even before the elephant habitat!”)

Speaking of cellblock six, the steps into it were decorated with a decidedly American seasonal flourish.

I had some pictures of the elephants, but they’re just too depressing: these gigantic creatures, bigger than most cars, even most SUVs, milling around in cells that barely give them room to turn around in. On the other hand, Molli Malou did get to see the big bull elephant relieve himself of liquids and solids quite spectacularly, so she was happy enough with the visit. Also there was an elephant skull she danced around. Literally. There’s video, maybe you’ll see it some day.

Okay, the next two pictures tell an interesting story of Molli Malou’s illness. Here she is as she was when I brought her home from vuggestue on Monday. Poor thing couldn’t even keep her head up. I pampered her ridiculously. We watched videos and I spoon fed her oatmeal.

Not long after the oatmeal (the first full meal she’d eaten in about 24 hours), she suddenly perked up. Perked up with turbo. Perked up so much it almost scared me. The limp, sniffling noodle of a few moments before had been lying so lifelessly that I’d decided to do some vacuuming while she lay there.

Sproing!

I got video of her vacuuming efforts. She actually did a pretty good job of vacuuming the four square feet of that corner of the room, although it took her about ten minutes.

The episode was charcteristic of this illness: she’d spend an hour or more lying around all spent and strung-out and glassy-eyed, then suddenly perk up, run around like mad, laughing and chatting and singing like her usual enthusiastic self — then suddenly wind down again, curl up in one of our laps, and mewl and whimper unhappily.

Fortunately that all ended at some point yesterday. She was perky through breakfast, and actually asked me to take pictures of her. This is one of the few that came out worthy of sharing: in most she’s trying to shovel oatmeal up her nose or is sticking her oatmeal-coated tongue out at the camera.

Later in the day she wanted me to take a picture of her with one of the Plet books Trine got her from the library. (Plet is Danish for Spot, more or less, and he’s a little puppy that has silly little misadventures in a whole series of pop-up books.)

As to her fit this morning: I won’t embarrass her or ourselves by getting into it. Oh, what the hell…

She’s 27 months old, more or less, and from what I’ve read her behavior was entirely normal. After some internet research and sober consideration, Trine and I seem to agree the problem arose because I am customarily Molli’s morning caregiver, and this morning Trine tried to take care of Molli in her own way, which is different from my way. From Molli’s point of view that must have been a cataclysmic disruption of The Way Things Are.

Her anger was at first directed at Trine, as She Who Had Wrought Disruption, but eventually turned on me. She had asked Trine for oatmeal, and Trine had prepared some, but suddenly Molli wanted noodles. With me it was not anger, but weird manipulation.

I made it clear there would be no noodles. Oatmeal. No noodles. There were no noodles to be had. Mor had made some oatmeal. Molli would eat her oatmeal. No noodles. Period.

Thus began about twenty minutes of hysterics — more than long enough to turn her piping hot oatmeal into a cold gelatinous lump.

Finally she had calmed down enough that I had picked her up from the couch (where we ignore her while she throws her tantrums) and was finally contemplating not throwing her out the window, when she suddenly noticed, on the floor by my feet, the sut (pacifier) she had hurled there earlier in a moment of rage.

“Daddy get sut?” she asked.

As is our usual routine in such situations, I bent over and held her down close enough to the ground that she could reach it.

She kicked and screamed.

“Daddy will get it! Daddy will get it!” she howled.

I set her on her feet without taking my arms off from around her.

“Molli Malou’s a big girl,” I said. “You can pick it up yourself, then Daddy will pick you up again.”

Her face was red. Her fury was cyclonic. She trembled as she wailed:

“Ikke Molli get it! Daddy get it! Daddy will get it!”

I was unyielding, and immediatebly became He Who Had Betrayed the One Who Had Trusted Him Most.

“Now! Sut now! Daddy will get it now!” (I couldn’t help being reminded of that famous hiss: “It puts the dog in the basket now!“)

We let her shriek and moan and scream and kick and fuss and rant and rave and blow snot bubbles out her nose til she was blue in the face, and eventually she calmed down and indicated she would eat her oatmeal if she could sit on daddy’s lap. It seemed like a reasonable compromise. I put her bib on and gave her a spoonful. She tried to eat it, then spit it out.

“Cold oatmeal!” she howled.

I was going to chide her again, but thought it only fair to try some of the oatmeal myself. It certainly didn’t look appetizing. It wasn’t. It was cold and almost chewy.

“I’ll make another bowl,” I said.

“Make more oatmeal,” Molli nodded reasonably.

We made another bowl together, as we normally do each morning, and Molli ate it from her normal seat at the table without any further fuss. When she had finished it, she removed her bib, lowered herself from her chair, ambled across the room, and plucked her sut off the floor and popped it into her mouth.

“Wanna play?” she asked.

Forty-five minutes later I’d dropped her off at vuggestue without further incident. An hour later I was on the internet doing searches like “terrible twos coping,” “dealing with tantrums,” and “selling your toddler.”

And I found out what most of you already know, which is that her behavior was totally normal, our handling of it was pretty much appropriate, and, thanks to the parenting site at About.com, I used the Terrible Twos Calculator to determine that we only have to deal with this kind of thing for another 263 days and 10 hours.

Hell, that was seven hours ago… only 263 days and 3 hours left!