January Jitters through March Madness

Well, here it is, the middle of March. There hasn’t been a single photographic blog post of anything in 2011. This is on account of travel, illness, and loss of internet. But we’ll put the excuses behind us and move right into the ongoing saga of Molli Malou and Maddie.

We actually start in a blurry sort of concatenation around the New Year (I’m trying to get the pictures in order, but these are off my phone and have lost their datestamps so I’m not going to get it exactly right).

There had been a lot of snow before Christmas, and it kept refreshing itself into January. This is a shot from early January, I think, on my way to a meeting in town after yet another snowblast had pasted us.

This next is a sideways shot (sorry) of one of Molli Malou’s Christmas cards, or maybe a reminiscence of Christmas.

And a recollection of her counting book, which filled us with such pride at her phonetic spelling abilities when she simply wandered off to a corner for half an hour and then surprised us with it.

In early January I had a work retreat way up in Nordsjælland, in Snekkersten, at a beautiful old spa hotel. It was incredibly modern and technologically advanced on the inside, but on the outside it looked like a traditional Danish farmyard.

The piles of snow that had pummeled us all through the end of 2010 had been difficult to work with, all light and fluffy and insubstantial, but the January storm had some moisture in it and Molli Malou was finally able to build the snow fort she’d been planning all winter.

At Jørgen’s birthday dinner (I think), Maddie’s ice cream cone gave her a Colonel Sanders goatee worth adding to the permanent record.

In the third week of January I took a business trip to Staines in England (just outside Slough, where the original “Office” show is set). I was excited because I was very close to Runnymede, where they’d signed the Magna Charta, but I not only never made it out to any of the several sites claiming to be “the” site — the agenda was so full that I was only out of doors during daylight for my walk from the hotel to the office each morning. So this shot across the Thames of some pretty hotel I wasn’t staying at is about the only image I have from the trip of any interest.

Meanwhile, Molli Malou kept forging ahead with her newfound literacy. “Kære mor og far,” she’s trying to write here, “jeg elsker dig.” That means “Dear mom and dad, I love you,” but it has grammatical as well as spelling problems since the “you” should be plural (jer instead of dig). But in Danish, pronunciation of “Kære mor og far jeg elsker dig” is not in fact be far from, “ker mor o far jai elsko dai,” so we’ll cut her some slack.

We of course encouraged her literacy experiments, and quickly found ourselves pelted with communiques of all kinds.

Finally one day in late January or early February — I think the latter, because I believe I took this photograph while Trine was in the hospital with pneumonia — the snow melted away in a matter of a couple of days. Our entire neighborhood was suddenly entirely devoid of snow (exposing all kinds of things that had been buried underneath the white blanket, such as the shovel and slider you see here), except for the last little fist-sized remains of Molli Malou’s snow fort, the white dot in the middle of this picture.

Another flashback, this time from Trine’s phone (I think): just a reminder of the kinds of English we see around us all the time even in commercial setttings.

And what has endured for me as one of the iconic images from Egypt’s tumultuous January (taken off one news site or other), just to keep the world events in context here (I have no images of the Libyan civil war or the devastating Japanese earthquake that have made such global impact in the last couple of weeks):

And a shot from Deep River just because I love it and think it should be part of the record for the girls to look back on: we thought we had snow in Denmark? Ha.

Maddie’s first pony ride, at Bymidten!

Confident in her real or imagined reading skills, Molli Malou sometimes entertains her little sister with pedagogical literature.

Let’s step back to New Year’s now… Molli Malou tries out a party hat at Frederiksberg Center:

We bought a slightly smaller arsenal of fireworks than we did the year before, but it was still astonishing to me that such a powerful assortment of pyrotechnics could be ours for the blasting for a few hundred kroner. For Maddie, I think, the dirt-cheap sparklers were just as enjoyable, if not moreso:

Also in early January we had the treat of Nana and Pop-Pop’s Christmas package arriving one cold and otherwise uneventful weeknight. I have great video of everyone digging into their presents, all of which were a big hit, but none of which compared to Maddie’s enthusiasm for her new pants, which she pulled on herself immediately, over her onesie pajamas.

And I pulled on my new sweater! (There need to pictures of me now and then, don’t there?)

Another selection from Molli Malou’s book of numbers.

And another shot of her fantastic fort.

More of her Christmas cards…

What made this winter so difficult for us were the illnesses. First Maddie had her usual two-month cough and runny nose — that’s the price we pay for sending her to the petri dish known as vuggestue — but in late January it flared up badly and turned out to be strepped throat. That took her out of vuggestue for a week, and in caring for her Trine managed to catch it herself. She tried a little too hard to fight through it on her own, and eventually it became acute pneumonia and she had to be hospitalized. It was a horrible couple of days worth mentioning only because they happened, but we also need to remember the joy of seeing her doing so much better just four days after being admitted (this is the lovely Bispebjerg Hospital “social room” in the wing Trine stays in):

I have found that when I’m alone with the girls for extended periods of time, a good way to keep them occupied and happy is to immerse them in water.

Molli Malou’s class at school put together an art exhibit in February!

Molli Malou’s is top center in the following photo:

Here she is proudly pointing out her bird.

Hers is the far right on the second row up here (the row with just three pictures):

The abstract section:

A closeup of that elephant picture… observe the mystical floating palm trees!

And I’m hoping maybe Uncle Gene can explain to us what cellular functions this drawing is supposed to represent…

Here’s her still life:

And the proud artist posing with her works.

At home she tends to work more with the mise-en-scene genre, happily arranging scenes of domestic tranquility for her dolls and stuffed animals. (The sign says “House Henriette’s,” and reminded Trine and me of Molli Malou’s own “first house”… see it here.)

Molli Malou and Sofie colored their hair one day in February.

I love the mother-and-child bliss of these shots from early March…

Molli Malou lost a big upper tooth! Show us, Molli!

Please? Big smile!

With your mouth open, honey…

You’re not shy about that big gap-tooth smile, are you?

(Actually that’s a Fastelavn mask Molli Malou made.

Fastelavn was upon us!

We went to the barrel-whacking down at Bymidten.

Maddie’s first attempt at whacking the cat from the barrel was not a big success. She just tapped gingerly at the barrel as if afraid of waking up its tenants.

I love this picture of Molli Malou and Sofie on the cycle-go-round at Bymidten — Hannah and Sophie surely remember it from last summer — but it doesn’t look quite as good shrunk down like this.

As the girls get older we have less and less idea where Molli Malou is in the neighborhood or who she’s playing with at any given moment, and often have a sudden invasion of girls pouring into the house. Here are the neighborhood chicks enjoying their Fastelavn goodies (a few minutes after this photo was taken Fie would arrive, and the house erupt into anarchy for two hours).

We’re caught up on the photographic record!

Much else to get done today… besides being my birthday this week (which we actually celebrated last night), Morfar will be visiting for a few days, and is bringing with him Jasmine, the 18-year-old niece of Maria’s from Brazil, who will be staying with us as an au pair for about a month. Lots to get ready for — and now it can be done with a clear conscience, knowing the blog goes on!