Back in the USSA

After unloading all my flashcards and memory sticks I had about 566 pictures and videos from our 16-day trip to the states. After burning them all to a DVD, I vowed to delete all but the best from my overcrowded hard-drive. I’m too soft: I could only bring myself to delete six dozen of them… leaving about 440.

The following 48 pictures therefore only represent a little over 10% of the total photgraphic output from the trip. They are neither the best photographs nor the most representational, but they do a pretty decent job of chronicling most of what ought to be chronicled on this, the ongoing history of Molli Malou.

Molli Malou handled the trip out very well. The trips were uneventful, and she slept a lot. She met a little boy named Sean at the airport in Reykjavik, and the two of them chased each other around the airport with glee, communicating with only a single word (the German word, it turned out, for airplane: Sean was German-American).

From Iceland on, we’d been telling Molli Malou we’d meet PopPop at the airport, and that he’d be taking us to see Nana. She was very excited about this. Too excited, as it turned out: when we finally deboarded she began chanting “PopPop! PopPop!” All the way down the gate. All the way through customs. All the way through baggage pickup. When we finally emerged into the arrival hall and she saw PopPop standing there waving Danish and American flags, however, she curled up against me and whispered “PopPop” in her tiniest little voice.

By the time we reached the parking garage, however, she had pretty much thrown herself at him and she even cried when he left us momentarily to pay the parking fee.

Upon arrival in Deep River, Molli Malou threw some love at Nana, then immediately went to sleep. The next morning she wasted no time in showing us how well she’d adapted to her new surroundings.

No, we didn’t force the flag on her. PopPop had been waving it at the airport, as I mentioned, and she somehow got her hands on it. I think she actually slept with it overnight. She clutched that thing all that morning, and even into the afternoon. I have dozens of pictures of her storming around the house and the property, proudly thrusting the flag before her. It done her daddy good.

Our first big trip was to the pool, where Nana wasted no time in spoiling her granddaughter with an ice-cream treat.

Her English was rough when we first arrived: I hadn’t realized how badly it had slipped relative to her Danish. Here she is trying to tell PopPop to give her his hat, while he listens patiently to what surely sounds to him little different from the babbling she did at 18-months.

But more on the language thing later.

Nana and PopPop had purchased a big wading pool which they set up in the backyard for MolliMalou to splash around in. She absolutely loved it, especially on those very hot days when we first arrived, but only seemed interested in staying in the pool so long as she could fill her bucket from the house and dump the bucket into the pool herself. Seriously. Turn off the hose and she’d scream to have it turned back on again, and if it wasn’t, out she climbed.

I include the next photograph only to remind myself, years hence when the fog of time has clouded everything, that air-travel during wartime was not without anxiety: the London arrests came not much more than 24-hours after our arrival.

Trine and I went out to WalMart and spent some silly money on silly toys to supplement Nana and PopPop’s stockpile. She and PopPop spent nearly a half hour playing with this gigantic purple ball. Over the course of the two weeks, she would log hours of entertainment from the thing—and her entertainment, of course, is always our entertainment as well.

$2.88 before taxes.

I suppose there’s a little coyote in the girl…

She was thrilled when her aunt, uncle, and cousins appeared.

I spent most of the next week trying to get the perfect shot of Molli Malou with her cousins, with her aunt and uncle, with her grandparents, with her mother, on her own… the kids just move too fast. This was an adorable scene of Uncle Gene hanging out with the the three girls while their bicycles got prepped for use. I took fifteen pictures of this moment, and this is the best of the bunch. And it’s not very good.

I still think of our family as small, but we were nine at mealtimes. This is the only shot I took all week, I think, in which you can see a little piece of everyone but me. Crowded kitchen.

Mmm… watermelon…

The Lees had rented a beach house in Old Saybrook, all of ten feet from the beach. We spent a lot of time there, and Hannah and Sophie took fantastic care of their cousin at all times… a care she enjoyed so much she simply went stumbling along after them wherever they went and whatever they did.

The weird thing is, it wasn’t our shirt…

Closing in on the perfect shot of the three girls:

Aunt Deb reading to Molli Malou with sound-effect support from Hannah and Sophie.

Chris Metzger drove up from the city early in the week for a short visit.

The weather was beautiful for most of the trip, but there was one very blustery day at the beach house.

But I kind of liked what it did to Molli Malou’s hair…

Molli Malou reveled in the presence of all her American family members, but as usual she seemed especially drawn to the guys.

The adults had their own entertainments each night. Gene and I developed the “Hot & Dirty Martini” … a vodka martini with pepperoncini juice, garnished with one of the spicy little peppers.

They look interesting, but believe me: one was enough.

One of the great discoveries of the trip was Molli Malou’s love of corn on on the cob.

At one meal she actually ate two-and-a-half cobs. It’s tough being back in Denmark, where corn is roughly four times the price. (In the states we got it at the farmstand for about fifteen-to-twenty cents per ear; in Denmark it’s almost a dollar an ear.)

On a visit to Great Grandma, Molli Malou satisfied herself with a cookie.

It was a very nice visit.

And Great Grandma spoiled her with some ice cream as a dessert to the lunch that Molli Malou couldn’t eat because the cookie had ruined her appetite!

Later in the week both Metzger siblings, Chris and Alysoun, stopped in for a night with all of Aly’s children in tow. That gave us a kiddie table of six, all girls.

Molli Malou’s table manners were never better. She rises to the level of the children around her.

The girls got along beautifully (just wait until you see the videos).

As much fun as she had with Aly’s girls, Molli Malou never forgot where her bread was buttered.

Which isn’t to say she didn’t throw herself into all the fun with all the girls… very literally.

But her favorite thing of all was when all the older girls joined up and raced her up and down the street in this plastic green wagon. (“Whose is it?” we called after them. “Don’t know,” they called back indifferently.”) Molli giggled uncontrollably as the wagon rumbled up and down the little lane, the girls laughing and panting as they hauled her.

“Mere, mere!” Molli would cry at the end of each ride.

“Ikke mere,” the girls finally learned how to say.

“Meeeeee—aaaaar!” Molli would cry.

“Okay,” the girls would consent, resuming their places and hauling her again. And so it went.

Left to her own devices, however, there was still nothing to compete with the joy of hurling rocks into the sea.

Speaking of throwing things, I have to include this one shot that has nothing to do with Molli Malou.

Pats-Cardinals preseason action at Gillette. Tom Brady. Corey Dillon. Troy Brown. (Junior Seau? In Willie McGinest’s number 55 jersey?) Kurt Warner. Larry Fitzgerald. Edgerrin James. Anquan Boldin. Pats won, 23-3. Or maybe 26-3. I forget, and it really doesn’t matter.

Sticking to the sports theme, PopPop and Nana did their best to get Molli Malou into golf, as they did with their other granddaughters.

But Molli Malou was just as interested in onions as she was in golf.

Another brief visit: Mike MacIver and his girlfriend Lynnette drove down and spent the night the Monday before we left.

I have so many pictures and videos of Molli Malou and her cousins with the lobsters, including a stellar video of the infamous Lobster Race 2006. Molli Malou was interested in the lobsters. She wouldn’t eat any at the table, but she did ask for an empty lobster claw, which she toyed with throughout the meal. When she woke up from her naps in the ensuing days, strangely enough, she was as likely to ask for the lobsters as for any of her relatives. She even did it here once over the weekend.

A nice shot of mother and child.

We were flying out of Boston and didn’t want to come up from the south through the monstrous Big Dig Redig (consult recent Boston headlines if you find this confusing). We therefore drove up to the Lee household in Chelmsford for a few final hours with them prior to our final drive into the airport for our 9:30pm flight.

(This is where you need to flip over to the Live Lees blog for supplementary material, including, I hope the beautiful Snow White who met us at the door.)

Molli Malou was presented with yet another gift from her aunt, uncle, and cousins: a pair of pink snakeskin boots (you know, from those hot pink snakes you’re always stumbling across in Arizona’s chi-chi neighborhoods). She was awed by them. Here she is clomping around the Lee living room in them: it’s a sight we’re now accustomed to here at home, as well. Even when running around the apartment nude, she will suddenly disappear for a few moments and reappear in nothing but those boots and a big old smile.

We thought it’d be a good idea to get Molli Malou running around a little, what with the fourteen hours of travelling that lay ahead of us. We got her and her cousins to the nearby park—the playground where the girls go to school, actually—and they were off in a flash.

Hannah and Sophie helped Molli Malou learn all the different parts of the jungle gym, giving us lots of photo ops. This was the best I could do.

We tried getting the three girls to pose with their grandmother, but they were restless… and impish. This is one of the only shots, for example, where Sophie isn’t crossing her eyes, curling her tongue, or balancing a stick on her nose, and where Molli Malou isn’t screaming bloody murder.

Trine and I tried to pose with them as well, and couldn’t even get everyone on the bench.

Sophie did her best to make Molli smile: she’d balance a little twig on her nose and cross her eyes, and Molli Malou would go into hysterics.

There are hundreds of photos from this little outing from our camera, and dozens more on Deb’s and Nana’s. I also got a lot of video. This is probably not the last you will see of the Great Chelmsford Playground Energy Burnoff and Photo Op.

The Energy Burnoff aspect of the adventure worked beautifully: Molli Malou stayed awake all the way to the airport, through her McDonald’s Happy Meal, and onto the plane… then slept all the way to Iceland.

This was our last glimpse of Boston on the way to the airport:

Molli Malou’s final embrace of her grandmother:

And off they go into the sunset…

There’ll be videos in the days ahead, and maybe a slideshow or two, but at least I managed to get this in before the whole month of August expired.

Molli Malou has exhibited not a single sign of jet lag since the moment of our return. She stayed awake until 10:30 pm the night we arrived, having slept almost all the way on both flights. The next morning she woke at about 8:30, took her normal nap, and went to bed at her normal bedtime. And she’s done the same every day since. Trine and I had a harder time adjusting.

Her command of the English language has increased exponentially. She now says “yes” instead of “ja/yeah” to me. She says “stop!” when she’s tired of being tickled or teased. She plods after me in the morning and sighs, “Molli hungry, want oatmeal, hot oatmeal.”

She has learned never to touch electrical outlets. “Never touch. Dangerous. Don’t touch. Ow.”

She has even begun singing the alphabet song: “A-B-C-D-E-B-G, A-B-C-D-M-M-M-O-E, Q-R-M-M-M-M, DUB DUB A-B-C, now I know ABC’s, wumma wumma, one two free.”

She talks constantly of lobsters, porches, corn, pushing buttons, and big boogers. She occassionally blurts out some remembered anecdote from the trip. She remains convinced that she actually learned gymnastic routines from her cousins, and continues to jerk herself around on the floor saying, “Watch this!” and “Molli do a split!”

But she is also keeping up with the present, and very happy to be back in vuggestue. She was so excited to make her big return yesterday. Trine had gone off to school and I had prepared Molli Malou for vuggestue and gotten her down on the street to begin walking over there when I suddenly got a call from Trine. Her class had been cancelled, she was on her way home, could we wait until she got back to go to vuggestue? Of course we could. I said so, and turned Molli Malou back toward the apartment. She stopped in her tracks and pointed toward Godthåbsvej.

“Vuggestue that way!” she cried. “Molli go to vuggestue!”

“Yes,” I said. “Not now, later. Mor’s coming. We’ll go with mor.”

Molli eyed me suspiciously. She seemed to think we were in some kind of negotiation.

“Five minutes,” she said. And we returned to the apartment.