Babypalooza

Holy hell… we hosted the baby group brunch today, and five of the six members of our group (these are the babies Molli shared a room with in the neonatal ward) arrived. Very interesting to see Molli among her actual peers. More on that later. First, a few shots from earlier in the week to get caught up.

Last Sunday we met my American “beer-stroll” friend John McConnoco, his wife Sandie, and their son Liam for a walk around the lakes. I’m not posting any shots from the walk, but it was the first time we put Molli in this new ensemble:

As you can see, it’s election season in Denmark:

The poster above says, “Vote for me. I never lie.” It’s a picture of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the current Prime Minister, who’s expected to be reelected on February 8. Apparently the “Liar, liar / Pants on fire” campaign strategy is being embraced as warmly here as it was in the states.

A day or two later I took Molli out for a stroll in yet another ensemble. I took the photo because I loved seeing her in the Patriots gear, but the striking thing about the photo to me now is that it looks like Molli’s posing for some kind of Baby Rap album art. (Anyone know the Danish for “Yo, homey?”)

I think I’ve mentioned the hair thing. It just keeps coming. Here’s a fun shot of her hair when it’s wet and we’ve had a chance to play with it:

Now fast forward to Saturday morning, when we’re doing a photoshoot for farfar’s birthday. To get Molli to smile while moster Mette held her, and while I took the pix, Trine started hopping around and speaking in tongues in what appeared to be a cross between aerobics, whirling dervishism, and an epileptic fit. Molli was delighted beyond description.

Even when she calmed down, there was something so happy about her expression that I had to keep taking pictures:

But I’ve gone out of order. Friday was the day of Lone’s funeral. (Lone was Lise Lotte’s mother, and therefore Uffe & Jesper’s grandmother.) It was a beautiful and touching service. Afterwards there was a wake at Jacob’s apartment. From there Trine had to go up to a late Julfrokost at the factory, and Mette volunteered to spend the night with Molli so I could tag along. It was the first time Trine and I had gone out alone together and kicked up our heels since December of 2003. We had a great, great time.

(Molli also slept very well and didn’t give moster Mette any problems, which is encouraging.) Not content to rest on her laurels, Mette rocked our world again this morning by coming over just to help us clean in preparation for Babypalooza. With the apartment looking as nice as it has since we moved in, I thought I might finally share it with you.

Our dining room and living room are really just one big room. Here’s a shot looking into the living room from the dining room:

And here’s a shot looking back into the dining room from the living room:

This is my office, very soon to be converted to Molli’s bedroom:

And here’s a shot of Trine cooking up scrambled eggs and bacon for 12 in our kitchen:

Now we move on to Mollypalooza. Here’s the best of the four shots in which all the babies were in a small enough area to get them all in frame:

The amazing thing to me is that the average weight of these babies is probably now about 7 kilos, which probably isn’t a whole lot less than their combined birth weights. Molli was on her best behavior and made us very proud parents by showing off for all the other babies and parents—and mugging for the camera every inch of the way:

It was especially nice, I thought, to see her with Lucia. Lucia was in the incubator next to Molli, and was just the tiniest little scrawny thing I ever saw. She’s now actually a little bigger than Molli. It melted my heart to see them checking eachother out. They loved touching each other to the extent that each of them accidentally whacked the other one at one point, but neither seemed to hold a grudge:

And here are two closing shots of Molli and Lucia plotting something with Frederik:

There are dozens of pictures from the Babypalooza, and hundreds from the past week, but those were among the best. I’d like to try getting back to a picture or two every day or two instead of big huge bonanza like this every week, not just for your sake but for mine.

(Tomorrow, by the way, Molli finally has her first business meeting at Io, and then tomorrow night we’ll be celebrating Jorgen’s 70th birthday.)

In terms of the Molli Development Index, she had a very interesting day. She really did seem to be showing off for the other babies and parents, and managed to roll back-to-stomach and stomach-to-back repeatedly all afternoon, and hasn’t slowed up since they all left. She also ate a couple of little bites of a pancake, and Trine reports as I write this that she’s apparently figured out how to splash in the bathtub (bam bam! bam bam!). We don’t think crawling is very far off at this point: it could begin before we head off for the states, while we’re out there, or shortly after we get back, but it certainly doesn’t seem like it’ll be much longer. She’s already at the point where she can, by rolling, twisting, and rolling again, eventually manage to get her hands on anything within about a three foot radius–as I found to my horror the other day when I walked out of the living room for a minute to prepare her lunch and came back to find her trying to eat her pack of wet wipes.

She also provided some valuable comic relief at the wake on Friday by becoming obsessed with beer bottles and greedily attacking every beer bottle that came within striking distance. Someone, I can’t remember who, actually said to me, “You should get her used to the taste of beer while she’s still interested in it, because when she gets a little older she’ll hate it.” This seems to be part of the Danish psyche, since there are actually “beer bread” baby foods—I think there may even be some in our cupboard.

That’s okay, but I’m going to draw the line at snaps…