Preflight Checkin

We leave for the states in just a couple of hours… and if I come back to Denmark with our whole trip to blog, plus this current backlog, it’ll never get done. So in the interests of continuing Molli’s entire-life-on-a-blog, here’s a quick recap of the past week or so.

Since I left the factory we´ve really only done two things: worked on the apartment and prepped for this trip.

Some of our home improvements were minor and required little effort. For example, here’s the sign we’ve had on Molli’s door for as long as she’s had her room:

Here’s her new signage:

Of course, at 12 kroner (about two bucks) per letter, it was quite an expense. When we get our hoped-for second child, the smart money will be on monosyllabic names—like Ip or Mo.

We went into town to meet John and Liam for some of the Copenhagen Jazz festival.

While I was working the late shift at the factory I got out at midnight every night and was always astonished how much light there still was in the sky. Check it out: this is taken from the parking lot outside the factory at about 12:15.

Earlier this week we had a lovely hour or so in Frederiksberg Have with Molli Malou. She spent the first ten minutes or so chasing some geese all over the place.

She also enjoyed walking up and down a couple of big rectangular beams lain one atop another as some kind of tactile art or something. Eventually, later in the afternoon, she worked up the courage to jump off the low end of the beams, even without full support. It was the first time she’d ever jumped from any kind of a height. (Deliberately, anyway.)

I tell you, that pink hat is just photographic gold:

While Trine spoke on her phone, Molli Malou grabbed mine and made a play call of her own. We thought. Later in the day we found out she’d called Joergen. “Someone called,” he told us, “but I could just hear voices in the background.”

Long live the pink hat:

Mormor and Joergen came by for an evening with Molli Malou before the big trip. They certainly seemed to be getting the most of each other!

Sorry for the lack of commentary, but I’m about out of time. Here are two anecdotes cut and pasted from an email:

I was walking down the street with her in my arms the other day when she suddenly issued this gigantic, almost superhuman belch. It was so disproportionately huge she giggled right away, and Trine and I were laughing right along with her. “How could such a tiny girl make such a giant sound?” I asked. Before Trine could even venture an answer, Molli blurted, “Like Daddy!”

* * *

After the meal with Mormor and Joergen Molli (who was by now naked) was jumping off the table into our laps. [As you can see in the last pictures.] One jump toward Mormor failed, though, and she dropped to her butt on the table. She’d done that before and gotten right back up, but this time she seemed to be hurt and we didn’t know why.

“Pig hurt Molli,” she explained in Danish. We had no idea what she was talking about until she stood up… she’d landed right on a little toy plastic pig that must have nearly gone up her butt!

We comforted her and urged her to resume jumping. She got in position, all excited again, ready to jump, happily murmuring “jump to Mormor, jump to mormor!” — then suddenly stopped, bent over, picked up the plastic pig, moved it about a foot away, and said, “not with the pig!”

* * *

Our flight leaves in just four hours… Bye!