Milestones Amok!

Five days, five milestones: an anniversary, a first lost tooth, a wedding, a birthday, and the 4th of July.

The thirtieth of June was the wedding anniversary of Nana and Pop-Pop. There was, alas, little we could for them in Værløse, except to wish them continued happiness.

On the first of July Molli Malou lost her first tooth. That has been chronicled already, although I can now vouchsafe that the Toothfairy came through and gave her 12 kroner in exchange for that tiny little tooth. (The new one has already broken the gum!)

The second of July was the wedding of Gert & Maria. They were married at Rådhusplads in Copenhagen at 1pm on that sweltering Friday. Trine and I met them on the steps of that iconic city hall.

Maria attracted a great deal of attention in her dress, and mere moments after Trine and I arrive she was swarmed by tourists who wanted to have their picture taken with her.

Things were more sedate inside. The ceremony itself is only covered in video, which will follow tomorrow. The following pictures are from after the brief civil ceremony, in the great hall.

Trine and I had to rush home and work like mad to prepare the house for the following day’s birthday party; by 7pm we were dressed to the nines again and on our way back to the wedding reception dinner at Copenhagen’s most elegant old restaurant in its most elegant hotel, the Hotel D’Angleterre on Kongens Nytorv.

The meal was the “tasting menu,” which consisted of six or seven courses — I didn’t photograph them all so I can no longer remember — the first of which was the strangest dish man e’er was served: a bubble of green foam.

(I apologize in advance if my language strains itself… 3½ years ago during my first weeks at Berlingske I won as a Christmas goodie the BBC’s complete works of Shakespeare on DVD, and I have just this week decided to watch them all while I work out. )

Kongens Nytorv ain’t quite herself these days, as construction has rendered her a mess. (That’s the facade of D’Angleterre on the right.)

Another dish from the tasting menu, which my computer has for some reason flipped sidways:

And another:

Ah! And here is the best, a gorgeous and delicious hunk of beef tenderloin topped with a seared slab of foie gras:

Groom and daughter:

Maria preparing to cut the cake (the hat cut her face out of so many pictures!):

The cake itself:

The happy couple:

There are, mercifully, no photographs of Trine and I cabbing it home at about 1am, or of me staggering around the yard thereafter planting birthday flags. We resume instead an hour or so after Molli Malou came tearing into our bedroom at 5:45 am screaming in every language she had hold of that IT WAS HER BIRTHDAY!

Her morning presents were mostly minor things and toys we thought might come in handy at her party. But she was thrilled by all of them.

Immediately after eating her breakfast and opening all her presents, she insisted on packing herself into her birthday outfit.

But she just as quickly discovered it itched her chest, so she switched it out for a little white summer dress, which her father found much more appealing and therefore demanded a new round of photographs.

We were nearing zero-hour, decorating like mad.

Decorating is difficult in the presence of a curious little monkey. Here she is preparing to climb up to the table in order to grab everything grabbable, break everything breakable, and toss everything tossable.

We managed to pull everything together in time for the arrival of nine little princesses, and the first order of busienss was sitting them in a circle to play spin the bottle.

The bottle was spun to determine which princess should bestow their gift upon Molli Malou, who opened each one with a cry of gratitude and delight and exclamations that she was just ever so pleased and excited and it was just what she wanted.

Aside to future Molli Malou: if you’re wondering why Mille next door isn’t in the pictures, it’s because she was attending her parents’ wedding in Jylland. If you’re wondering why Sofie from three doors down isn’t in the pictures, it’s because her family was on vacation in Spain.

Back to our narrative. After the gifts came some outdoor play time, then began the meal proper. Trine proposed a toast to the birthday girl.

Next, calamity. Every year of Molli Malou’s little life, we have served Turkey Clubs at her birthday parties. They have become legend. However, prior to this year it has been mostly adults at said parties. The princesses did not cotton to our American delicacy. Having toiled hours in the morning heat (it was, I have subsequently learned, the hottest July day in Denmark since 2005) to prepare 12 BLTs (a full turkey club would have been too much, we had decided, for little princess mouths to get around), I was dismayed to discover only three princesses were interested in BLTs.

Worse still, most of the BLT-refuseniks were equally uninterested in the meatballs Trine had slaved over for two days running. We were afraid the poor dears might starve, and threw everything we could at them: egg salad, crudite, bread and butter. Eventually we got all ten princesses through the meal (I am so proud of Molli Malou for flouting peer pressure and reveling in her BLTs), and it was time for the Wicked Witch’s treasure hunt slash princess challenge.

No, wait, first a little time burning off whatever they’d eaten:

Right, then the treasure hunt. The wicked witch first dared them to pin the kiss on the frog!

Later they had to run a course round the back yard with a poison apple balanced in a spoon!

Then they had to bob for apples, which we had to spend some time explaining were NOT poison, after Daddy had so foolishly stressed the imaginary poison qualities of the self-same apples whilst they were bespooned.

This poor girl wandered off into a corner of the yard and wept, literally wept, because she was so afraid of the poisoned apples. But Trine comforted and calmed her, and I then persuaded her to let me get a picture of her bravery.

Cake time!

I should mention that thanks to Skype, Nana and Pop-Pop watched about half of the party unfold.

And that was that! We couldn’t waste any time after the princesses departed: now it was time for the family party, and we would be joined by Jørgen, the newlyweds, and some of their German friends.

Maddie was already rehearsing for the morrow.

Molli Malou was given her big present: a Nintendo DSi whose default desktop was a photo of two tiny kittens.

Ever wonder what the semaphore for “How about a Nintendo for me?” looked like?

Jørgen, Morfar, Maria, and their friend Johanna came by at this point, but your humble chronicler was by then too exhausted to assume his photographic duties. Having planned a big barbecue dinner for everyone, Trine and I succumbed to our exhaustion and suggested we order pizza. We did, and everyone was happy.

Morfar got to explain to Molli Malou that the kittens on her Nintendo screen were kittens that he was giving her for her birthday, but she barely seemed to register the fact. She was blinded by Nintendo nirvana. If you’re interested, you can see the cats in this video (wmv format, 78MB) from when Trine visited them a few weeks ago: the ones we’e getting are the mixed-color cat with the M stamped on its forehead and the black one with the blue eyes. We’re bringing them home August 9, mere hours after our beloved but feline-allergic Chelmsford relations ship off to Paris.

At last bedtime approached… and the Nintendo had assumed full ownership of Molli Malou.

The Fourth of July was, almost needless to say, anticlimactic after the preceding four days, so I present the photos from that day with a minimum of text.