2010 Wrap

I think I’ve mentioned it was a busy fall. Molli Malou started school, Trine was back in classes, Maddie was closing in on her terrible twos, and the new job had me working like mad and flying all over. On top of that, about a week before Thanksgiving I got my bi-annual Cluster Headaches, and they knocked me completely off my game until just a few days before Christmas.

That much said, I have remained determined not to let this blog die: it’s a wonderful thing to have as a parent, to follow the growth of our girls, and to chronicle our life in such a way that we need not depend unduly on the questionable power of memory.

So here is a very abbreviated catch-up of the past couple of months. I won’t pretend I’m not rushing through this, so I’m not going to waste valuable time getting all the pictures in chronological order: whatever madness the computer has imposed on their ordering is the order I’m going to work with.

So, Sherman, fire up the way-back machine to October 2010! Let’s get reacquainted with our subjects…

How about Halloween… that’s in October, isn’t it?

I’m not sure what Mille was dressed up as in the following shot — an extra from the Mikado?

In retrospect I’m a little baffled by Molli Malou’s costume, too. I remember she’d wanted to be a vampire, but here she merely looks like a well-dressed shopper.

And suddenly it’s November.

Not just November, but we’ll skip all the way ahead to Thanksgiving, which we enjoyed up at Steve & Elisabeth’s home up north. Their daughter Becca is Maddie’s age, almost exactly.

Molli Malou was a little bored.

…but her sister wasn’t. For one thing, Becca had a truck!

And for another, Becca shared her enthusiasm for the local paper.

…and they discovered in each other a profound appreciation for interior design.

It began snowing as we drove back home at the end of the night, and by the following morning we’d been pretty well pasted.

The funny thing is, I took all those pictures thinking, “Whoa, what a lot of snow we’ve had!” But as you’ll see, it was only just the beginning.

Meanwhile, late November also means Mormor’s birthday…

…at which Molli Malou sculpted a very impressive rockfish.

And next thing you know, it’s December, and time for the Julekalendar!

Maddie ended up breaking my camera that same evening, so things were looking pretty bleak for the future of the blog. It didn’t help that the chronicler himself was abruptly shipped off to San Francisco for work.

Except while out there I got to see a lot of our good friend Lisa, whom the girls know as “Crazy Aunt Lisa.”

My colleague Rie, Lisa, and I took a bus tour of San Francisco together our first day there.

It was a work trip, though. Really. See?

Ah! The vagaries of computer sorting had to catch up with us eventually… so the preceding picture is my last of California, taken from the cab on our way to the airport. But the next shot is my first in California (taken from my phone).

I think that’s because we’ve been looking at pictures taken on the camera Lisa lent us (we’re just holding it until she comes out to Copenhagen to reclaim it), whereas the next set were all taken on my phone.

For the first time in at least 7 years I got to see Monday Night Football without having to give up any sleep to do so. In fact, Lisa asked me what I wanted to do after the game and I was flummoxed. “After the game?” The very idea of there being time to do things after MNF was entirely alien to me. But I did get to see the game, a memorable (sorry Gene!) thrashing of the Jets by the Pats.

Quick show of hands: how many people knew there was a Dr Seuss museum in San Francisco?

That appears to be it for the SF Trip. Next thing you know, I’m back in tropical Denmark.

I got Maddie a kimono in Chinatown. (I also got a cute little suit set for Molli Malou, but it didn’t fit perfectly so we didn’t force it.)

The snow hadn’t lost any time in my absence. It snowed like the hell the night before we went to get our Christmas tree, and it was even snowing as we got it and brought it home.

That’s a look of pride you see: Molli Malou more or less decorated the tree herself while we Skyped with Nana and Pop-Pop.

My boss gave me a PS3 for Christmas (we’re the distributors for Sony Playstation in the Nordic region, so I’m assuming he just wanted to familiarize me with the product — heh). I stopped at a store on my way home, my last day of work, to buy a couple of games. It took quite a while to set the thing up, so I wasn’t ready to try a game until Molli Malou went to bed. I was so stunned by the game that I had to run in and drag her out of bed. She thought I’d lost my mind and told me she didn’t want to see any stupid game on tv, she wanted to play Doodlejump on my phone in her bed. But that tune changed real fast.

Oh… meanwhile, it kept snowing.

Now we’re closing in on Christmas Eve. Trine has made some whipped cream, and the girls get to relive the ancient tradition of licking the mixers (and bowl).

Jørgen enjoyed a few sets of tennis in Shanghai.

And Maddie enjoyed Jørgen.

At last it was time for Christmas Eve dinner!

And once again Molli Malou is astonished by the sight of Santa Claus addressing her from his workshop in the North Pole.

…and finally it was time to let the wild rumpus begin!

Once again that wily Santa led Molli Malou on a treasure hunt to find the gift he’d left her. Here she is scrutinizing a clue by candlelight.

And here she is pointing out the location of her next clue.

Maddie was not engaged in the hunt; she simply did her new puzzle over and over while big sister ran all over the house with glee.

I woke up in the middle of the night that evening and found that Santa had actually snuck into our home and stuffed goodies into our stockings!

Yes, that’s a bottle of scotch sticking out of mine — there’s a bottle of wine in Trine’s. Lovely Santa!

Christmas was a very quiet and restful day for us, once the girls got over the excitement of their stockings. By early evening we’d completely packed away the Christmas gear and set the denuded tree out in the back yard.

The following day, “Second Christmas Day,” we had the bi-annual Christmas lunch with Hagemeister clan. Molli Malou got her hair done up for the occassion.

Behold traditional Danish Christmas fare:

The lunch was held at a school, and Maddie made good use of the “smart” board.

It was a tough mix of kids: there weren’t any the same age, just tons of kids all at least a year younger or older than the next closest in age to them. Every kid wanted to play with the kid just a little older than them and wanted to be left alone by all the kids younger than them. So here’s Maddie following Olivia around like a shadow, while Olivia ambles after Molli Malou, who is trying desperately but unsuccessfully to win Sofie’s attention.

Olivia was actually very sweet with Maddie, and, perhaps sensing this, Molli Malou was very sweet with Olivia.

Random flashback!

Oh… and yes, it kept snowing…

And the final random flashback — I was able to have dinner with Colette one of my nights in San Francisco. We had a wonderful time and were both disappointed she had to take the last train back to Oakland at about 11:30. It’s not a very good picture of either of us, but it’s the only picture I have of the two of us together since about 1995, so I’m keeping it!

* * *

In all that rush to give even a minimal narrative frame for the pictures, I’ve passed over all the significant developments we’ve seen with the girls.

Molli Malou has been thriving in school and is doing very well there. She’s starting to read and write, and just the other night when we told her she’d earned enough stickers to get her reward of a pizza lunch, a movie, and then ice cream out with just mor and daddy — no baby sister! — she got all excited, grabbed a piece of paper, and began scribbling furiously. A short while later she handed me the paper and said, “Daddy, what does it say?” with a big beam on her face.

Normally when she does this, it says something like “moLLi mAloU sbeegRRRRie iiis prbl.” So that’s what I expected. But this time it said: “sgal i peografin,” which is sort of the Danish equivalent of “goink to the moovees.” It was a major, major step for her.

She’s also begun reading signs and logos with startling accuracy. Trine and I can no longer spell things to talk openly in secret. Our new secret language is French, but that’s not very handy because although Trine can understand the things I say, she can’t speak it herself. On the other hand, she can communicate competently in German, but I only understand the parts that sound Nordic, which Molli Malou would also understand. And Trine never took Latin, most of which I’ve forgotten by now anyway, so we’re really up against it and open to suggestions. Ig-pay Ating-lay, maybe?

While Molli Malou advances with the written forms of her languages, Maddie is advancing with the spoken forms. She’s clearly begun to separate Danish from English and has finally begun saying “no” and “yes” when speaking with me, although only about 75% of the time. Her reaction to spills, messes, and breakages is a decidedly American exclamation of, “Oh no!” And as all of her grandparents have experienced over this holiday week, she’s also become very adept not just at saying “I love you,” but substituting names for the pronoun: “I love Daddy,” “I love Mor,” etc. I have even caught her correcting herself several times when speaking to me — for example, at the sight of a cartoon pig on television, she exclaimed “gris — PIG!”

She’s also finally tired of pooping her pants, and announces the arrival of solids in her diaper immediately. “Stinky poo!” she’ll declare, then lead one of us directly into the bathroom to change her. Today, however, she’s exhibited a new behavior: lying about poo just to get her diaper changed. Not only that, but about an hour after I laid her down for her nap — this incident took place about 20 minutes ago — she called out very clearly from her bedroom, “Daddy!”

I went into her room and the smell told me the whole story. I brought her out to the bathroom, changed her, and put her back to bed. No fight, no resistance. She just didn’t want to continue napping with a diaper full of shit, and who can blame her?

I’m going to have to cut myself off here, but I do so with a fairly clean conscience. The blog is back up-to-date. Oh… and there’s Maddie anyway…