Goodbye ’09!

It’s been a very eventful December, so like most eventful periods the blogging hasn’t kept up with the photography (or videos). With the rest of the year off, I’m hopeful to get things caught up before we start the new year.

First, some pictures from the fall that I finally downloaded off my camera.

Molli Malou visiting with her cousin-once-removed Elizabeth (I think this was September):

Same visit, Maddie riding in a pink Cadillac:

Suddenly it’s October, and here’s Nana with Molli Malou at Frederiksborg Castle:

Molli Malou preparing for her royal portrait:

More recent days, now, and here are some of the COP-15 protestors as viewed from the window beside my desk at work:

I think all of Denmark wanted a good result from the summit to reflect well on Denmark, but most Danes were happy to see the end of the thing. I know I was.

Ironically enough, the last days of the global warming conference also brought Denmark’s worst winter snowstorm of the last 14 years. Watching the snowfall descend upon the city from our office was beautiful, even if it did make a bad transportation week even worse.

And with that we’re done with my phone camera, and we return to regular chronological coverage.

Here is Molli Malou trying to look blasé about the first of December: the first night of her Christmas calendars.

It’s hard to keep the blasé look when you’re five.

Even Maddie seemed to feel the excitement.

… Or maybe she was just experiencing pre-birthday giddiness. For December 2 was, of course, her first birthday.

We didn’t make a big fuss for the actual date of her birthday, but Morfar was in town for one of his visits and got to wish her a happy birthday up close and in person.

In looking at the blog from around the time of Molli Malou’s first birthday, we noticed Molli Malou had been served her first bowl of pasta at about that age, so we allowed history to repeat itself.

We threw a birthday party for her on the Saturday after her birthday, but we made it a Christmas open house (or “julestue”) since one-year-olds aren’t very particular about being the center of attention. We set up a bunch of tables with art supplies so people could make Christmas ornaments and decorations, which is apparently a common thing to do in Denmark. Six years here and I’m only learning that now?

I spent most of my time talking about football and video games and drinking beer and gløgg, but did manage to make one little decoration I was proud of:

It was nothing special compared to some of the other creations, but it was my camera and I’m the guy keeping the blog, so it’s what you get!

I should pause for a moment to reflect on just how special Maddie’s first birthday was to us, if not to her. On December 2, 2008, she came in to the world weighing just 2.86 pounds. That’s less than my weight difference when I got to bed at night and wake up in the morning. You can buy heavier fountain drinks at 7-Eleven.

As the preceding and subsequent photos show, she has blossomed into a lovely little girl without any serious health or developmental side-effects from her early birth. She is very clever and good-natured and as curious, willful, and ambitious as her sister (which is cute now, but will surely take its toll on us down the road). She is a magnificent, robust, intelligent, and beautiful child and every day I come a little closer to forgetting just how tiny, weak, and defenseless she was the day she was born — and the terrible weeks of her difficult beginning.

It’s good sometimes to make myself remember so I can relish the joyful and exuberant creature she’s become.

I might once have said something similar about Molli Malou, which seems almost surreal now. Fragile? Tiny? Defenseless? But enough reflection.

Bath shots never go out of style:

An interesting shot of a COP-15 exhibit at Højbroplads:

At the Berlingske Christmas Lunch I was “fortunate” enough to win a particularly bizarre gift during our gavespil.

It’s exactly what it looks like: a plastic yellow smiley face ball mounted on a flat metal bar with a wooden handle. No idea what it’s supposed to be, so I declared it a major award (thinking of A Christmas Story) and asked my colleagues to please pose with it as though it were the single most rewarding honor they’d ever received. They were good sports about it, and I can’t see the harm in posting some of the pics here.

Martin (Gene, this is Krat from Ricky Proehl of the AFL):

Eva:

Tue:

Marie:

Anders:

Tone:

Josefine:

Morten Suhr:

Morten Aaberg:

Peder (taking a less conventional approach, but by this time people had a lot more booze under their belt and he may have misunderstood my coaching):

Enough with the Berlingske. More importantly, Maddie is doing more and more independent standing.

And sue me, sometimes I keep taking pictures for reasons that later escape me.

Maddie was extremely intrigued by the tree from the moment we plopped it down in the sun room.

I almost deleted the photo below because it looked like a dull, badly lit picture of the tree… but zoom in on the lower right and its priceless.

I already mentioned the snowstorm that hit a week or so before Christmas. It hit Værløse much harder than Copenhagen. Molli Malou got right to work within hours of the snow starting.

It just killed Maddie not to be able to come help.

Noting for the record: her strange obsession with the spice drawer.

The following pictures were taken the very next morning:

And lo! We managed to find the snow blower that we’ve had such a hard time finding lately.

Trine took Molli Malou out sled shopping that night, and though it was too late to sled by the time they got home the poor girl was too excite to let her sled just sit out there in the carport. So guess who got to do some indoor sledding?

Maddie is a climber and a dancer. This is one of her favorite spots for both: she likes to pull herself up in front of the television and either try to climb up and over the gate or to simply dance in place.

Finally it was the next morning and we brought the sleds over to the nearest playground, which declines about ten feet onto a soccer field.

We went fireworks shopping before Christmas and Molli Malou picked out her New Year’s Eve apparel. Very New York, we thought.

Christmas tree shots:

Ah yes! Little Christmas Eve (Dec. 23), and Maddie wakes up looking like this:

Would you not think Chicken Pox? Of course you would. We did.

So we called the doctor to have it confirmed, and the doctor agreed but thought it was odd since Maddie hadn’t been directly exposed to anyone with chicken pox in the previous 72 hours, so she agreed to see her.

She had all kinds of tests and not a trace of chicken pox. So it was apparently just a rash or something, and would probably go away quickly.

We immediately washed every piece of fabric with which she came into contact on a regular basis and shoved it into a non-allergenic wash. Next morning: no change at all.

So we got her into another doctor who diagnosed it as a virus riding the heels of the cold that had dogged her since about Thanksgiving. It would fade with time, and we could give her antihistamines to ease the symptoms (which, it should be mentioned, were not bothering her at all: she never had any symptoms besies the spots and blotches).

It is our goal for 2010 that Maddie finally get to spend a Christmas Eve without setting foot in a hospital or visiting a doctor.

Meanwhile, our budding little Thespian came up with a whole new game that we call “car wreck” (or maybe “pedestrian mow-down”).

She even had the presence of mind to place a call to the ambulance!

Ah, the spirits were running high already on Little Christmas Eve (Dec. 23)!

One of Molli Malou’s gifts under the tree was a box that simply said “HO HO HO” in thick marker. She opened it, and it contained only a printed picture of the downstairs fireplace.

“It’s just a picture,” she said, and nearly went back to her toys.

“Didn’t Santa promise you a treasure hunt?” we reminded her.

And the treasure hunt was on!

Down in the fireplace was an envelope with a blue star on it. In the envelope… another picture! And so it went. The pictures were all like these:

..and eventually they led to a DVD.

“It’s just a movie,” Molli Malou said. She didn’t want to watch a movie and yet again made a move for her toys.

But we made her watch it. You can see it here. She went completely bananas the second it ended, running to her room faster than I’ve ever seen her move, literally skidding around every corner and bouncing off the walls. And sure enough, Santa had hidden a gift in the bench beside her bed even as she’d been lying there asleep on Little Christmas Eve!

“It’s true, it’s true, he IS real, there IS a Santa!” she shouted with glee, raising the gift triumphantly from the bench.

I think she enjoyed the hunt more than the gift. I also think we now have a fun Christmas tradition that can get more and more complex and ridiculous each year… just like our lives!

Santa was kind enough to pass along a photo of Molli Malou asleep in her bed on Little Christmas Eve, as proof that he’d really been there!

And finally… Christmas Eve itself!

I didn’t bother with a lot of pictures of gifts being opened, because I suspected (and was correct in suspecting) that they would all look the same: Big M tearing excitedly into one gift after another while Little M played with the discarded wrapping.

But I did try to get a little representative sample of the girls with some of their new toys.

Finally, it was time for bed. How was your Christmas, Molli Malou?

(That picture will make more sense in the context of a video to come later.)

And about ten seconds later, she was utterly out:

It’s late morning of New Year’s Eve as I wrap this up. It’s a sloppy post but it’s going as is, because I can’t bear having it hang over me another moment (I’ve been stealing odd moments here and there to try and pull it together).

Maddie is just about over her virus, with just trace splotches popping up from time to time. Molli Malou is very excited that we’re going to let her stay up all night tonight and is excited about the fireworks. We’ll try to Skype America as we get close to midnight to let you know how the New Year is shapping up and you can brace yourselves accordingly!

Maddie is closer and closer to taking her first step, and closer and closer to using “Mor” and “Daddy” with us.

Driving home from ice-skating yesterday, I told Molli Malou I couldn’t believe she’d never lived in America. I said I couldn’t wait until one day when we’d live there together.

“But I don’t want to live in America, Daddy!” She said it so plaintively my heart turned to ash.

“But honey! You love America, and there are so many people there you love and who love you…!”

“I know, daddy. It’s not that. But there are WOLVES in America!”

So maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to let her watch the Little House on the Prairie miniseries these past few days!

Happy New Year!