Christmas and New Year 2006

If by some error of my email list compilation you didn’t get the holiday newsletter, it’s right here.

I have surprisingly few pictures of the holidays — which is to say I have about the normal number of pictures for a normal person instead of the thousands and thousands I usually take for any event of any significance, however imaginary. It isn’t that my interest in my subject has waned, obviously, but because I just couldn’t keep up. And it’s also because Little Miss Congeniality took a holiday detour into the persona of Little Miss Demon.

Was it the overstimulation of the holidays? The stomach virus she fought off just before the Christmas break? The bladder infection she picked up somewhere along the way? The delicious but atrocious holiday eating habits? The lack of naps disrupting her nocturnal sleeping habits, in turn disrupting her mornings and days? The destruction of her well-established home routine by evenings out and guests in? The strain and psychological pressure of being potty-trained?

Probably (obviously) it was a combination of all these things. I won’t stoop to make Future Molli Malou blush in retrospect over behavior that’s entirely understandable, normal, and forgivable. I won’t even discuss it here any more than I already have. (Not much, anyway.) But I will sure as hell use it as an excuse for not having more holiday pictures of her first sentient Christmas.

(I have a lot of video, but it takes a lot more time and effort than I have at my disposal right now to edit a video. Probably in the next week or two I’ll put together a big old “December 2006” video covering everything from the selection of our tree to Molli Malou’s New Year’s boogie.)

Here’s the tree as it stood on Christmas Eve.

Here’s Molli Malou either making a last-minute decor adjustment or reaching for some pebernødder (“peppernut” cookies — little gingerbread-like button cookies that are a staple of the Scandinavian Christmas diet).

Here she is moments after the unveiling of Moster Mette’s gift: a table and chair set of her very own.

Playing Santa Clause…

Opening a present at her table…

Munching on a cookie or something with Moster Mette at the Second Christmas Day Lunch.

Yeah, weird: the film pretty much skips straight from Christmas Eve to Second Christmas Day. We spent almost all of Christmas trying to recover from Christmas Eve. Not from too much liquor having been consumed, but from… well, I promised not to talk about that.

The Second Christmas Day Lunch was held at the school where Jesper’s a pedagog, so the kids were able to burn off some steam in the gym while we gorged ourselves at table upstairs.

Oops… now we’re suddenly back to the apartment. Here’s Molli Malou making a dramatic exit from the Princess Palace that Santa brought her.

And a couple of pointless, silly shots of Molli Malou enjoying one of her more playful moments (it’s not like she was a demon the whole time):

At the Christmas Lunch, Jakob told me his daughter Anna had gone (repeatedly) through similar behavior cycles, and to try and force her into regular napping they’d sometimes just tossed her in the car and taken her for long drives during her nap time. By December 31, we had tried just about everything else, so we decided to load her into the car and drive up to Gilleleje.

Success!

And the North Sea was just foaming:

We celebrated New Year’s with Jakob and Lena and their kids, Anna (almost 5) and Anton (about 18 months). The kids had a blast together. Molli Malou was on her best behavior all night, and finally back to being the life of the party.

Anna had a baby doll that made sounds and needed to be put to sleep, comforted, given her pacifier, burped, etc, and Molli Malou fell so wildly in love with it that she actually brought it into her sleeping bag when we finally put her to bed at around 11. Fortunately she was unconscious when we went home 3 hours later and didn’t notice me yanking it out of her arms for return to Anna.

And that’s about it, still photography-wise.

Trine and I feel that despite the difficult (but understandable) behavioral issues that flared at times, Molli Malou has really transformed from a toddler into a little girl this month. She makes real conversation with complete sentences, now, including the following real examples—no exaggerations or even stretches:

In English, to me, as she was drifting off to sleep one night: “That was a very nice gift from Moster Mette!”

In Danish, in the car on the way home from Gilleleje, after she’d woken up and decided she was a little uncomfortable: “It’s not especially nice to sit in the car.”

To me, this morning, in English: “If I make a stinky poo, I get two pieces of candy?” (Her potty reluctance has reduced me to blackmail.)

In Danish, last night, in the car on the way home (and therefore only half awake): “That was a fun evening!”

In English, yesterday, as I was sitting at my desk and writing an email or something, she was suddenly behind my chair. “Does daddy have a tummy-ache?” she asked. She likes pretend tummy-aches, so of course I said yes. I felt a sudden pressure in my tailbone and I heard Trine, who was sitting on the bed behind me, burst into laughter. “Gotta take your temperature,” Molli Malou was saying. “Daddy has a tummy-ache, so we take a temperature.” I spun around to save my tailbone and see what she was doing: She was trying to jam her thermometer up my butt.

Happy New Year!