The December of Our Year

In the previous post, the weirdest autumn ever concluded with pictures of frost invading the landscape and unpeopled Thanksgiving tableaus.

I’ve tried to include fewer photographs of frost and set-pieces in this post.

December began, as November ended, with a flurry of pre-holiday holidays: first Advent Sunday fell on November 30, so December first (with its Christmas calendars and television shows) fell on a Monday, with Maddie’s birthday therefore on Tuesday.

I couldn’t find the time to put together a tribute post for Maddie’s eighth birthday, but there’s plenty of coverage of it in this post.  There’s also so much coverage of Maddie’s day-to-day life throughout this blog that I don’t feel I’m depriving future Maddie of anything — honestly, for the last few years the birthday tribute posts for both girls have just been “one picture a year” montages pulled together late at night on the eve of their birthdays, the pictures themselves drawn from this blog itself — but I felt I owed the blog an explanation.

As an experiment, I also offer this video montage of the month, which is about six minutes of unretouched raw camera video from throughout December.  (You might want to cruise through this post before watching it, otherwise you probably won’t have any idea what the hell is going on in the video.)

As the girls get older and technology gets more ubiquitous, more integrated into all our lives, I find the stash of photos on my phone toward the end of every month often includes pictures I’ve saved that were actually sent to me by Molli and Maddie.  Like this one from Molli, which I seem to recall receiving at some point in the middle of the month: it was the second or third Advent and the girls had gone off to Bymidten to check on the stockings they’d left at one of the grocery stores.  Ten minutes after they left the house, Molli Malou texted me this picture:

But I like to keep things chronological, and the new computer and my new photo handling methodology seem to be making that easier these days, so let’s go back to the first Advent Sunday — the last day of November.  I’d taken Maddie to Bymidten on some little errand or other, and had utterly forgotten that Christmas had officially begun there.

(That bit of information will come in handy when you watch the video.)

But now that I think of it, that photo may actually have been from the Saturday before first Advent, since that was the date of Maddie’s Christmas party at school.

It’s all very confusing, I know.  I apologize.

(And no, I didn’t spill milk on my phone; I’m playing around with filters.  Maddie’s in the purple and pink striped top, by the way… you can see her literally jumping up and down with excitement in the video.)

As an absolutely irrelevant aside, I realized one day at work that I was eating one banana, two clementines, and a pear every morning in the office — and that, arranged properly, they can be very inspirational.

(Seriously.  We get a big basket of fruit every morning, and once clementine season arrives I grab the same handful of fruit every day while getting my first coffee: two clementines, one pear, one banana.  And it was only after doing that for weeks that I realized I could make a fruit smiley every morning.)

In one of the previous posts from this fall I pointed out that the little playhouse on the “black playground” had disappeared without advance warning.  I was delighted to see its removal turned out to have been simply a question of preparation for its replacement — and so, it would seem, was Didi:

December first!  The first of twenty-four consecutive mornings where the first words out of the kids’ mouths are, “Daddy, can you get the calendars down?”  (We stash them up on shelves where the kids can’t reach them.)

December second!  Or, as we refer to it here on Hybenvej, International Maddie Day!  And don’t worry: even though the pictures don’t show them, there were plenty of American flags to mark the occasion as well.

Eight!  Little Maddie, eight!  It defies belief.

At her request, we celebrated at her favorite restaurant — the fabulous Hai Long Chinese buffet in Bymidten.

I love the expression on the birthday girl’s face when I ask if she really needed that second dish of ice cream. . .

And I love the appreciative awe she shows her mother for having given her (along with her father!) the exact skateboard she’d wanted for her birthday.

Meanwhile, our Christmas lights were set up for the season!

That Saturday Molli was busy with handball, but Trine and I brought to the annual “Christmas Tree Party” at my office.

And then it was Second Advent. . .

Weirdly, Maddie’s choir group had a St. Lucia procession about a week before St. Lucia’s day.  I wasn’t able to make it, but Trine sent me a shot of Maddie and her friend Astrid all ready for the big procession.

And not long after that came the big second grade production of Klods Hans (the H.C. Andersen fable that is often translated as Clumsy Hans, Blockhead Hans, Silly Hans, or other variants).  Maddie was in the chorus and was very happy to see us in the audience.

Another handball day for Molli, Trine and I took Maddie into the zoo.  I hadn’t been there for years.

(The staff were handing out nissehue — Santa hats, I guess we call them — to all kids entering the zoo.)

I took a lot of animal pictures that I don’t want to bore you with, but this polar bear picture came out so well I can’t bring myself to exclude it.  There’s no zoom involved, but there is a 3-inch slab of plexiglass between us and the bear.

No plexiglass protecting us from the wild beast below, but the depth of the pit kept us safe.

(Actually a really cool thing: they converted one of the old bear habitats into a place that kids are allowed to go and play around in.)

Which doesn’t mean they got rid of the old playground (I like that I caught Trine in the background):

The goats are still all there.

And now we’re already up to Third Advent!

This was about the time of the Super Moon, and it really was spectacular.  I didn’t manage to get any good shots of the moon itself, but I like how this one of our neighborhood came out.

Every night at 19:30 we watched Den Anden Verden (“The Other World”), and at 20:00 we watched Ludvig og Julemanden (“Ludwig and Santa Claus”).  Molli Malou remembered the latter from its original broadcast a couple of years ago, but it all felt new to Maddie.

It was stressful having that hour of television every night, but once it was underway it was always a cozy little hour.

The Super Moon impressed Maddie and me one morning at school: that’s it glowing over the roof in the background.

They had “code week” at Søndersøskolen the last full week of school, where total focus was on learning the building blocks of coding.  Older kids got to play with actual code, younger kids (like Maddie) got to play with apps that taught the basics of coding (if-then statements, loops, etc) by gameplay.

To try and inject myself into the social fabric of my “new” job at PensionDanmark, I’d volunteered to be on the Christmas Party Committee.  It was a lot of work, but the party ended up being a big success, and my role as Toastmaster and Bingo Caller certainly injected me into the social fabric.

So did the jacket and tie I borrowed from one of Maddie’s teachers.

The following day while shopping Maddie earned yet another certificate: she was trained (as were any other kids who wanted to be that day) as a cashier!

And lo, so it was the Fourth Advent at last!

Time to decorate for real!

The Tuesday before Christmas was the date of Maddie’s class birthday party, which she shared with her friend and classmate Josephine.  (They shared last year, too, at our house, so this year it was at Josephine’s.)

We were running low on firewood for the holidays:

But fortunately we’d ordered a fresh cord and it was delivered the Tuesday before Christmas.

Unfortunately I was home sick with a killer cold the day it arrived.

But I was feeling delusional enough that I thought, all right, what the hell, I’ll sweat the cold out of me!

…and it worked!

For about 48 hours.  Then the cold came back, hard, and has been very, very slow in letting go ever since.

The Thursday before Christmas we got the girls into town with Mormor for a little last minute shopping.

And finally: Christmas Eve!

The photo below was taken at about 3:00 pm as I romped Didi.  Thank god the days are only getting longer now!

Last episodes of the Christmas shows!

Girls all dolled up and ready for the Christmas Magic!

And finally — juleaften!

I meant to post this picture of my own plate on Facebook because it’s an almost perfectly Danish Christmas Eve dinner, with one minor exception, and I wanted to see who could spot the exception.

Can you spot the one thing on that plate that isn’t traditional?  Answer below!

Maddie got so wound up at dinner — like a really manic drunk — that we actually had to make her go lie down and chill out for a while.

The mandelgave (“almond gift”) was a window marker that the girls had great fun with after the meal and throughout the night.

And finally, finally it was time to open the gifts!

Maddie was especially glad for her new “Orbeez” foot spa.

She was so happy, so satisfied, that she refused to go to bed — yet somehow managed to find her way to a couch and drop off without any of us noticing until she was fast asleep.

I share the picture below of Maddie’s new IKEA wardrobe not because it’s significant in itself, but as a reminder to myself of how I spent Christmas Day.

I loved the decorated door so much I tried like mad to get pictures.  Here’s the best I could manage.

My favorite is the cow named Glen going “moo.”  (Well, muh is just Danish for moo.)

I’ve asked Molli repeatedly why she named the cow Glen and never got any kind of an answer.  But I think “A Cow Named Glen” or “Glen the Cow Says Moo” would be a great name for an 80s band.

Lastly, a propos of nothing, I stumbled across someone on some website sharing the following quote, and I screenshotted it because it’s one my own all time favorite lines from movies — from one of my own all time favortie movies — and I’d never seen anyone else even remark on it before.

(He also adds: “You may quote me.”)  There’s so much wisdom in that nugget — the whole heart of the very heartful movie is packed into its twenty-seven words — that I’ve actually had it as the header of my online to-do list for many years.  Seeing it cited by someone else made me happy.  It seemed appropriate to include in a year-end blog post.  Here’s hoping that whatever 2017 turns out to be, we can all be oh so pleasant!

Answer to the Christmas plate question: the anomalous (non-Danish) ingredient is the delicious little pile of Stovetop Stuffing.  Good god, I love the stuff.  And that was our last packet!