Chatterbox

I just haven’t had time. Sorry. But I don’t want to waste what little time I have explaining how little time I’ve got.

So from a couple of week’s ago, a great shot of Morfar with Molli Malou. (Not the happiest shot of her, unfortunately: she’d enjoyed every minute with him until this point.)

Molli Malou is taking an interest in her footwear. I was playing with her in the living room one afternoon when she decided she wanted to put her outdoor boots on… and she was not interested in any help. She looks quite happy and charming here, but as her frustration mounted an altogether different girl emerged. (No pictures of her.)

She’s just more independent overall. I suppose this is a preview of the terrible twos: she’s beginning to want to do everything on her own, and throwing huge fits if she’s not given the chance. At grave risk to ourselves, we let her wield her own showerhead once in a while:

But she’s still a very happy girl in the tub, even when Mor or Daddy takes the showerhead into custody.

Bath pictures are like potato chips…

The only time Molli is more consistently adorable than when she’s in the bath is when she’s just out of the bath.

For the past three weeks I’d been unable to go to Molli’s swimming class. Trine’s been coming home every Wednesday night with remarkable tales of Molli’s growing prowess. Finally I was able to join them this past Wednesday.

Some of the other kids in the class are amazing: one two-year-old is already capable of swimming fearlessly around the pool on his own, provided he’s got his flotation belt on. Molli’s not quite there yet, but she sure loves being in the water.

She’s especially fond of jumping, as she’s preparing to do here. We have lots of video of her jumps, but I’m sort of between video editing packages at this point and just don’t have the time to commit to putting a video together anyway.

Another big recent development is her insistence on walking. Trine kept telling me how often Molli would insist on being taken out of the stroller and allowed to walk whenever they went anywhere: “And she went from the kiosk to the park!” “And she went from vuggestue to the mall!” “She made it all the way home from Mormor’s!” But my busy schedule hasn’t given me much time for walks with Molli, and certain other parents (*ahem*) aren’t quite as fervent about taking photographs, so I didn’t really see for myself until yesterday, when she walked from Godthåbsvej all the way to Frederiksberg Centret (ie, the mall)—with a huge smile on her face every step of the way:

We weren’t going to the mall to shop. We were going to let Molli play on their indoor “sled hill.” Here’s a shot (Molli’s in line with one of us in there somewhere, but this is the best “establishing shot” of the indoor sledding hill).

Trine and I took turns sledding down with Molli, and even Mormor (whom we bumped into while we were there) got a chance. All told I think Molli had about eight trips, and she still wanted more when we finally dragged her away.

We have no good pictures of her sledding, but we have a video clip of each and every descent. The best is one of the first with her and Trine; it’s 3MB and I can email it on request.

Look how nostalgic she gets when we tell her it’s time to leave the sledding behind!

As I write this, Molli is having a play date with her old boyfriend Julius while their mothers hang out. I knew I would use the free time afforded me by the visit to put up a new Molli blog, so I feverishly started taking pictures not long after they arrived.

I wanted a picture of them doing something together rather than just standing close to one another, but it hardly seemed possible.

Of course they were still very interested in each other, but also very wary. Elmo seemed to offer the best chance of bringing them together.

But even Elmo couldn’t keep them close enough to give me a shot with both of their faces in focus.

Finally I gave up. I had a cup of coffee, started arranging the pictures you’ve already seen, then realized Molli and Julius were just toddlers and could bloody well be stage managed into a decent picture. I went back into the living room all afire with my mission. Julius was playing over by his mother, over by the coffee table, and Molli was strolling around the dining room with her baby pram.

“Molli,” I said, “show Julius your stroller.”

Miraculously she obeyed! She turned around, set a course for Julius, and drove straight toward him. She stopped right in front of him.

“Now show him the stroller,” I commanded. I turned to Julius. “Look at Molli’s stroller!” I said.

Julius gave me an indifferent look. Molli stared down into her stroller, up at Julius, up at me, then swiftly seized the handles of her pram again and rammed it into Julius at full force.

He was more surprised than hurt, fortunately. We scolded Molli, but she didn’t appear too upset by the scolding… suggesting she knew she’d done something wrong.

At this point I gave up. But I still had the camera in hand, so I took a seat on the sofa and said, “Molli, just give Julius a kiss to show you’re sorry.” I was ignored, but Trine picked up on the theme and offered the same instructions in Danish.

They squared off…

…and paydirt at last!

Molli’s development has kept up at its astonishing pace. She’s forming primitive sentences now—mostly stuff like, “more candy,” “please, daddy,” and “cat meow.”

She kisses me and says “bye-bye, daddy” when I leave for work in the morning.

This morning she was throwing a bit of a fit at one point and smacked me in the chin.

“That was bad,” Trine and I both told her. “Say you’re sorry!”

“Sorry, daddy,” she said. Then she pointed to the spot on my chin where she’d struck me and said, “ow.”

She’s become obsessed with the Teletubbies. She can even sing along to part of their theme song “Lala… Po… ‘tubbies, sig hej! Hej!” We have one borrowed videotape of them and one DVD I bought last week, both in Danish, but we also let her play at their website on the computer. (She also likes Elmo’s website, Kaj & Andrea’s, and Bamse’s.)

Just a few moments ago Trine and I were curled up on the couch with her watching the Teletubbies DVD. Molli picked up the remote, said “Bye-bye, Tubbies,” and turned the DVD off with the remote! I’m sure it was just luck that she got the right button, but it was crystal clear she was imitating her parents, who always tell her to say goodbye to the Teletubbies before we turn off the DVD or VHS player.

We’ve got a “parent-teacher conference” type thing on Tuesday, where her vuggestue teacher will be giving us a sort of progress report on how Molli’s doing. We’re anticipating something along the lines of, “she’s very bright, but she’s very stubborn and willful and you have to work harder at teaching her no.”

(We have been trying very hard to teach her no, she just doesn’t seem to learn it as well as we’ve been teaching it.)

Now she’s in here begging for my attention, so I’ll have to leave it at that. I’ll try to get back in the swing of at least weekly updates!