Back in the Saddle

It’s been what, three months?

Since the last Molliblog posting, we’ve sold our apartment, had a month’s vacation in the United States, packed all our belongings, moved into the house, and unpacked. All of this while also confirming and making preliminary arrangements for the estimated January 2009 arrival of Molli Malou’s brother or sister.

I suppose I could have popped onto the blog now and then with text-only entries in the time since we’ve arrived from the states, but it’s only now, today, August 23, that I’ve actually finally had time to assemble, shrink and post the photographs from our American vacation. There were about 1000 to choose from, maybe twice that, and I have whittled them down to the small few I thought best represented the trip.

The small few count a paltry 232.

I can’t possibly annotate 232 photographs in any kind of detail. There are also countless stories from the states, and Molli Malou’s experiences there, but I will have to give them short shrift just to get caught up.

I don’t even think I can fit the whole thing into a single blog post… you’d have to scroll down to your basement to see it all. So I’ll break it up into chunks and see how we do.

One note up front: I got a lot of great shots. The next stop after posting those that follow is to pick through the whole lot and send off batches of pics, including some not seen below, to those who I think would like them. Based on our current schedule, you can look forward to those hitting your in box in, oh, say… Christmastime?

Anyway, let’s do this thing. It’s June 27 and we’re going to fly to America the very next day. When we get back from our trip, we’ll have five days to move every last possession out of the apartment and up to the house. How cozy is our little home on Holger Danskes Vehj?

We flew through Amsterdam to Hartford. Molli Malou was her usual travelling self: cheerful, excited, and strange.

Molli Malou got to meet Winnie for the very first time.

She loved her!

The Lees came down from Chelmsford to celebrate Molli Malou’s birthday. (I’m sorry if the pics are out of order: they just are. I don’t know why.)

Nana and her granddaughters had a lot of fun giving one another manicures… or in some case Nanacures and Hannahcures.

I don’t think I’m going to comment on every individual shot of the cousins… it’s just so wonderful to see them together!

The Tedster!

Great Grandma took Molli Malou for a spin on her drag walker!

Pop Pop got a lot of help at the grill from his littlest granddaughter, and stole some of those moments to share the majestic view with her.

Funny girl… and corn! Delicious American corn on the cob!

Lots of shared moments with Nana in the kitchen…

And here we are a day or two before her birthday, or maybe at this point it was her birthday, practicing with sparklers!

And enjoying another Nanacure!

I love this next picture and want to blow it up to poster size. I find it very touching, pun inclusive.

We took the ferry to Gilette castle with Nana. It was a spot we’d visited with Mormor and Jørgen way before Molli Malou was born.

On the way back to Deep River we swung through East Haddam and I was finally able to get some digital pictures of the apartment I rented in East Haddam as my Connecticut crash pad when Trine and I first moved east. (The apartment was the entire second floor, which wasn’t quite as big as the picture makes it look.)

Back to Deep River for another walk with Winnie and Pop Pop, and then off, apparently, to the Essex playground.

Here’s Molli Malou on her private spot. She really liked sitting on the big rock on the side of the property. It became a sanctuary for her: when she felt cross or sad or shy she would flee the house without a word and settle down atop her rock, back to the house, staring wistfully out at the river coursing below.

But here she’s just smiling for the camera.

And here we are, finally arrived at Molli Malou’s birthday!

How old are you today, Molli Malou?

Okay, never mind: you’re four!

Molli Malou learned how to swim while we were in America! Though not all at once…

Molli Malou also indulged her passion for photography.

But we still prefer her on the other side of the lens.

The day after her birthday we drove up to Chelmsford for the 4th of July parade. Before we went out to the parade, Molli Malou rang up a fortune in clothing at the Hannah and Sophie boutique. Here’s Hannah ringing up the sale.

The fact that she’s lived all four years of her life in Denmark have done nothing to diminish her American patriotism.

The weather wasn’t great, but the girls didn’t seem to mind.

After the parade we went to the Chelmsford town green, where they had some kind of festival going on. Molli Malou and Sophie had their faces painted.

Molli Malou loved being toted around by big cousin Hannah!

But what’s a fourth of July without some time at the pool?

And a backyard barbecue… with sparklers!

And4-year-old girls in… tiger suits!

Chatty Molli Malou was always on the phone.

She loved American breakfast cereals.

And the tiger suit her cousins had given her.

Uncle Gene and I took the girls out to the nearby state park (or whatever), where Molli Malou enjoyed feeding this goat. (I know it’s a sheep. You know it’s a sheep. But for the life of her, Molli Malou could not be persuaded it wasn’t a goat.)

After feeding the goats it was time to fish.

And then back to the pool.

And finally bedtime.

Then it was back down to Deep River, where Molli Malou had finally learned to write “Molli” and began taking shots at “Malou.”

And back to the Lambs’ pool.

Now it was time for the trip to Chicago. Nana and Hannah were flying off to surprise Great Aunt Beth for her birthday in Seattle so we went to the airport together.

It was a cloudless but hazy day as we flew in…

And we’d hardly been there a few hours before Moster Mette was getting her first Mollicure.

At this point we decided sort of spontaneously to tell Molli Malou she was going to be a big sister. I have the actual moment on video, and will share that eventually in this space, but here’s the general effect:

She had to feel Mor’s tummy… there was a baby in there? Really?

For the rest of trip the first words out of her mouth nearly every morning were, “Mor, is the baby still in there?”

A storm rolled in one evening in classic Midwestern form. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a storm front roll in with such linear exactitude. In the picture below, it was sunlit summer joy to the south (on the right)… and the to the north it looked like the Apocalypse had been unleashed.

Molli Malou was still taking a lot of photographs, often without my knowing it until I unloaded the camera.

One evening we decided to give her kite a whirl down by the lake.

The wind wasn’t with us, so we decided to hang out at the playground for a while.

Friday afternoon Moster Mette had some time alone with Molli Malou while Mor and Daddy caught up with Geoff and Austin and nine old friends on the north side…

Saturday was our crazy reunion day. So I don’t know what this shot of Water Tower Place is doing here, but there it is.

We started reunion day with a brunch, meeting David Bryson and the whole huge Clan Moran: Heather, Mike, and their kids Jack, Maggie, and Lulu (Lucy).

Here are Molli Malou and Maggie…

After brunch we were also joined by Matt O’Neill and his daughter Nina and we went into the Lincoln Park Zoo. Here are Nina, Maggie, and Molli Malou.

And Matt himself…

It didn’t seem that long ago that Matt, Heather, Trine, and I were doing late night theatre and prowling the 5 o’clock bars of Chicago. And yet a shot like this, of all our kids, puts time into perspective. (How long til I can write a Fathomless Next Generation show?)

Heather and Mike.

The progeny:

After the zoo we had lunch with Matt and Nina then went back to Moster Mette’s, where we were all able to get a rest before part two of reunion day: we went to see Allison and her husband Manny in a great production of Zorro, then they had a party and we got to see still more of our friends (though no more kids). Do these pics belong in a Molliblog? I don’t know. But all these friends are keepers, and hopefully Molli Malou will see plenty of them in the future, so why not include them here?

Trine with David:

David and his wife Ingrid were also expecting, and it was actually during our visit that they found out it was going to be a girl (their second).

Here’s a great shot of Geoff and Allison.

Trine and Allison:

(Haven’t really ever told Molli Malou that Daddy was married before, not because it’s a secret or even matters to her, but because there’s been no real point and she wouldn’t have any idea what I was talking about anyway. At one point in the basement in Deep River, though, she stumbled into an old collage that included pictures of Daddy in a tuxedo with a Woman Who Wasn’t Mommy in a pretty white dress and veil, and she stared at it in puzzlement for a minute, then finally just shrugged and moved on.)

Rich Cotovsky:

Dave again:

Classic Cotovsky portrait:

Matt and Nick Digilio. I include the image for my own benefit: it was a sight I saw down the bar to my left probably about 2-3 times a week for several years.

I’m just including any picture of me where I don’t have a double chin.

Meanwhile, back at Moster Mette’s, Molli Malou had been fully accessorized with a big pink boa.

I never, ever, ever get tired of the view from Mette’s balcony.

Sunday afternoon there was a breeze so we decided to give the kite another chance. I loved the sight of Molli Malou and Moster Mette crossing under Lake Shore Drive hand in hand, but I couldn’t get a picture that captured the sweetness of the moment. This was the best I could do:

Well, we’re about halfway through the photo album now, so I’ll call it quits and publish this. I’ll finish the rest soon. But Molli Malou is sitting beside me and wants to type her name, so I’ll let her do that and then post this.

The following is her handiwork:

molli malou