December 2015

We’re into January as I write this — it’s January 3, it’s Sunday afternoon, and the temperature has plummeted below freezing and will not be surfacing above it into the forecastable future.  Early December already feels like it was an age ago, and the very notion of summer feels difficult to believe in.

On the other hand, life resumes its regular course tomorrow, and day by day we are seeing just a little smidge more daylight — at least on those rare but wonderful occasions when the clouds are kind enough to allow the low and timid winter sun to peek down upon us.

December is a very different month from the others.  Every year it seems we work from August through November to force our household into something like a routine, and that just as we’re beginning to succeed December rolls along to blow it all to bits.  So we pick up the pieces in January and struggle to recover our lost momentum right up until the anarchy of summer vacation.

The transition from November into December is always tumultuous for us because of its constellation of red letter days: Thanksgiving, Mormor’s fødselsdag, Maddie’s birthday, and the first Sunday of advent, so we always feel as though we’re lagging even before the month’s worked up a full head of steam.  Our evenings transition from 30-60 minutes of “homework hygge” every evening that the girls aren’t occupied with lessons or practices to an unrelenting schedule of one Christmas Calendar show at 19:30 and another at 20:00, the lateness of the shows requiring that bedtime routines and story-reading be waived for the month.  Instead of rising groggily each morning and asking what’s for breakfast, the girls’ first demand every morning from the 1st through the 24th is the retrieval of the Advent Calendars — all thirty of them — down from the impossible-for-kids-to-reach Advent-Calendar-Stash, and in the excitement of opening all those calendars they often as not forget to eat their breakfasts.  That slows things down just as the change in weather means that getting dressed for the bike ride to school is becoming a task in itself.

There are workplace Christmas lunches and social Christmas lunches scattered across the calendar, and all the girls’ academic and extracurricular groups and organizations have their various little Christmas klatches.  And of course there are the other Christmas and New Year tasks to address in between all those comings and goings: the buying of presents, of decorations, the baking, the planning, the ordering of fireworks, the — oh, of course, the execution of one’s professional responsibilities.  But in Denmark that last is practically an afterthought in the month of December.

The season never seemed this unmanageable and exhausting to me in the states, but that’s probably less on account of the cultural differences than the fact that I never had children, a dog, or a house in the states… although really, even taking that into account, the Danish Christmas fever seems to be at a much higher pitch than its American counterpart.

That much said, it should not be hard to understand that we are grateful for any distraction that will keep the girls happy and busy and on their own for reasonable lengths of time, so when Maddie asked if I could add something to her computer that would “let me write stuff and then print it,” it seemed like a good idea.  I installed a printer driver, got the family a subscription to Office 365, and Maddie was off to the writing mines.

Here she is showing me her first ever computer-written, laserjet-printed short story:

Many were to follow.  Very many.  Some were cute, some were intriguing, some bordered on disturbing until parental questioning elicited the innocent sources of her more questionable content. Molli Malou taught Maddie how to copy images from websites into her stories, adding a nice visual element to her narratives.

More on all that later.

Meanwhile, everyday life, December style: a new jacket for Molli Malou!

Look: they actually added a zip line to the playground of Søndersøskolen.  Remember the zipline at Bell, Aunt Deb?  Me neither.  Mainly I remember a bunch of concrete sewer pipes arranged randomly on a clump of gravel.

Maddie on the walk to school, winter style! (And apparently quite late, otherwise the light in the sky in inexplicable.  Unless we’re on our way home.  The lack of a bike is explained by a flat tire.)

At work we break out our Christmas bingo cards on December 1: every day a few numbers are drawn and there are many silly prizes to be one.  This year I won a Ferrari.  (Well, a 1/14th-scale, remote-controlled toy Ferrari, but that’s probably the closest I’ll ever come to owning one.)

(Yes, that’s a weird thing to share, but no detail is too small for the historical record!)

Note for the permanent record: it was late November or early December when the garbage people destroyed our garbage container.  This ended up being a positive development, as the one they replaced it with (on the left) is much nicer than the one they wrecked (on the right).

The second of December already has its own post on this blog, but only very briefly.  Here we see the ecstatic birthday girl enjoying a breakfast of French Toast on her seventh birthday.

Every once in a while I get the feeling best described by David Byrne: “Wait — how did I get here?”  I was overwhelmed by that feeling as we meandered into the library to drop off some overdue books on our way to Maddie’s birthday dinner.

How did I find myself in the middle of Værløse, Denmark, with these three adorable chicks who actually happen to be my own personal family?  How are the two little ones suddenly so large, suddenly such people of their own — with their own personalities, likes and dislikes, habits, ideas, notions, phobias?  Readers of books, patrons of libraries?  Where did all of this come from?  How did I get here?

(When I remember it makes even less sense.)

But it makes enormous sense to me personally that at least one of my daughters should consider it the height of birthday awesomeness to go to a Chinese restaurant for her birthday dinner!

(Mormor and Jørgen joined us, and although Mormor sent me some lovely pictures — better than mine, in any case — I forgot about them until I’d already processed and uploaded all the pictures for this blog, so at this point it’s too big a pain to include them.)

We made our first family visit to the Copenhagen Planetarium the Saturday after Maddie’s birthday.  There was a brief but very cool 3D film about our universe followed by a longer, 2D, and not-quite child-friendly feature about the American shuttle program (Trine and I were fascinated; M&M were bored almost literally to tears.)

But the planetarium itself had plenty of interesting attractions.  Here’s Maddie controlling a spaceship with body movements (the green screen allows her to be projected into a video monitor that she’s watching keenly in this shot):

And here’s an iconic shot of Molli Malou: in a planetarium playroom full of fun, space-themed gadgets and toys, she’s taking selfies of herself in her scarf.

On loan from NASA, — for real — a stone from the Moon:

Resuming our “scenes from everyday life,” Molli Malou continues to decorate her room in very interesting and unique ways.  For example, the snowflake she put on her wall with yarn and tape (the discolored little circle you see is on my lens, not her wall: if you look carefully you’ll notice that spot is on all my pictures):

While we were shopping for Hannah’s graduation party in Massachusetts this summer, Molli Malou asked us to buy her a bunch of rice-paper lamp shades at the party store.  We didn’t understand why she wanted them: she had no light fixture appropriate for them, we explained.

“I don’t want them for lights,” she told us, “I want them because they’d be cool decorations.”

Well, they were cheap enough, would take up virtually no room in our luggage, and would obviously make her very happy to have them, so we caved.

And she was right:

Her desk is so tastefully arranged I get jealous:

…and I have no idea where she got these cacti, but they’re a cool accent!

Maddie chose to share her birthday party with her friend and classmate Josephine, who also has a December birthday.   We hosted it one week after Maddie’s actual birthday.  (That is, for those of you bad at math and calendars, on Wednesday, December 9, 2015.)  It was planned extensively and for weeks in advance, but somehow we forgot that there should be a fricking birthday cake.  I was hurrying home from work to get to a party already in progress when I got the desperation text: pick up a birthday cake on your way!


Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, I was able to send the picture below and receive confirmation that it would suffice with my phone (surely a non-sequitur to future Molli and future Maddie — why wouldn’t you be able to send and get feedback on a photograph, right away, from someone 15 miles away, using only your phone?):  

The party went off without a hitch.

The guests of honor:

And, later that very evening, back to the New December Normal: we’re all nestled in for the Christmas Calendar shows.

That Friday I attended a Christmas lunch thrown by one of our clients — DFDS Seaways — for all of their 2015 partners.  It was held on one of their ships, docked at Nordhavn.

Our entire holiday season 2015 was powered by a fantastic wine that we should probably remember (more on the use of this blog as a memory tool later):

That weekend, of the 12th and 13th, I got Didi out into Hareskov for the first time since the big storms of November.  I was astonished at the destruction.

You’d almost think the destruction followed me home:

We had a brief visit from Morfar that weekend, and the girls persuaded him to join them in a game of bowling on the Sports Champions game they got for second Advent.  It was the first video game he had ever played in his life!

Even Didi was intrigued!

The photographic record then suddenly advances a week: now it’s Third Advent.

And again: scenes from the New December Normal: Molli Malou and Maddie all cozy for the Calendar shows:

Meanwhile the company that employs me is moving from Frederiksberg to downtown Copenhagen. So it’s goodbye Frederiksberg…

And hello downtown!

(Those of you who have followed my career in Denmark will be pleased to see I once again have Rundetårn visible from the window beside my desk, although our courtyard gets a little in the way.)

Our new partner firm, Advance, welcomed us with an afernoon/evening of too much to drink and the thrilling conclusion of their annual Foosball tournament, which they simulcast and streamed live (simulcast on the screen at left, game itself to right):

The neighborhood of our new office is, I forgot to mention, not unfamiliar to me:

I never worked in that Egmont building, but attended probably hundreds of meetings there over the course of two years.  And Berlingske is just another couple of blocks down the street.  Adnuvo is then another couple of blocks from there.  And smack in the middle of it all is Studieskolen, where I attended 3 hours of classes five days a week for about two years.  So the new location feels to me like coming home.

The destruction of the forest was no more extensive than the destruction elsewhere in Værløse.  On my first walk with Didi from the house to “the old golf course,” I observed that the lake behind the school had lost virtually all of the trees on its northern flank.

Further along… I don’t know, the view is like this every year, the storms changed nothing here, but it’s such an iconic scene of Scandinavia yet the kind of image you never see as representative of Scandinavia: a cold and windswept moor, a sparse treeline the only barrier between it and a long line of rowhouses.

At home, the candles we had been burning every night of the month were reducing beautifully.

And finally we brought our tree home (nearly carving out the undercarriage of our car in the process, but mercifully there’s no photographic evidence of that…)

For the permanent record: this was the winter when Værløsehal expanded out toward the puppy playground.

And finally it was Fourth Advent:

December is the season of boxes accumulating, and the girls are always sure to see to it that at least one of them is set up as a rest home for the cats.  Didi finds this exasperating.

This scene went on for several minutes and I took dozens of pictures, but not a single one of them came out decently… but Charlee was practically sneering at Didi, who kept mincing suspiciously toward her on tiptoe then suddenly scrambling back as if afraid the box were some kind of landmine.  Probably should have gone with video instead of stills.

Finally!  The tree is decorated almost exclusively by M&M!

…and now we have the nightly Christmas Calendar hygge in the full splendor of a Chrismas decorated house:

And I keep finding stuff like this in the printer:

(“Then I don’t know more songs.”  The honesty!)

For the permanent record. Trine did a great job of setting up the Christmas lights this year!  I want to stress that and give her all the positive reinforcement necessary for this to become her thing.  I could never do such a fine job.  It’s so much better when she does it.  Be sure to agree.

Upon Moster Mette’s arrival right around the solstice, Maddie established the Maddie Christmas Spa:

(“Be beautiful before New Year.  Maddie Spa for Christmas!” — the blue index card is a customer satisfaction card asking for feedback on one’s experience.)

Scenes from everyday life: during commercials in the Christmas Calendar shows, Maddie bounces around doing cartwheels.

Ah, the tree!

With Christmas only a few days away, we now have Moster Mette and Morfar in the house!

…and we never would have managed to get all the gifts wrapped in time without Moster Mette!

…Wait… the tree again?  Yes, but this time it’s fully loaded.

Another walk by the desolation of the lake behind the school… except this time, Didi gets herself impossibly tangled up in the carnage:

Not impossibly, obviously.  But very tangled all the same.  It took a while to get her out of there because it only occurred to me afterwards that the smart play would have been to unhook her leash and just untangle it without her squirming around and making things worse.

And finally, the big night is upon us.  Christmas Eve, 2015!  We have the girls’ entire maternal nuclear family in the house.

(Hat tip to Molli for getting a Christmas picture with Daddy in it!)

And now the pyromania that always terrifies me: lighting of the Christmas tree candles prior to the dancing around the tree!

And at long last… the great unwrapping!

(Note the empty stockings above: American Santa only delivers his goods for receipt on Christmas morning.)

On Christmas Day itself, it only took me two hours to assemble Molli’s big gift… very literally the biggest ever, in terms of LxWxH: a regulation-size handball goal!  (That’s two meters high by three meters wide by a little over a meter deep.)

Getting Maddie’s sewing machine together was less challenging, but more frightening: Maddie?  You need to keep your eyes on your fingers when they’re so near a motorized needle!

(“Well, duh, Daddy!”)

Our Christmas Day lunch spread:

And for dessert?  Cotton candy from the machine Didi gave us for Christmas!

“Second Christmas Day,” as December 26 is called in Denmark, was a fantastic day.  It really was.  Right up until it would not stop raining and I ended up spending the wee hours of the night bailing out the overflowing garage runoff well while Trine and Moster Mette bailed out the garage.

The next day made it evident that this had been a significant rainfall: the always-dry reservoir across the street had become a pond:

And the rain was still falling!  So much that I measured the  rate at which the runoff well was filling, and found that it was filling at about 3/8 of a liter per 30 seconds…!

…but eventually the rain did stop.  (Obviously, or I wouldn’t be writing this: we’d be cowering on our roof waiting for helicopter rescue.)

And the following Monday Maddie spent at the home of her oldest and best friend, Astrid N., and when I went to pick them up they performed a whole Skt. Lucia optog for me:

(Look, it’s an iPhone, I’m doing the best I can.)

Back at home, Molli Malou had sewn Maddie a whole new dress!

Oh… and remember my having said I would have more to say about using this blog as a reminder? Here’s an extract of the December 2014 blog (posted at some point in the spring or summer of 2015) in which I remind myself which fireworks to order for New Year’s 2015:

We ordered three of these Metallic batteries for 2015… and you can read about their spectacularness in the January 2016 blog that will assuredly be appearing in this space in about a month’s time!

Meanwhile, the glorious new year is well underway — it is now Monday night, January 4.  The Danish PM shocked the country late this morning by announcing the introduction, effective immediately, of border controls on our German border; the Chinese market lost 7% of its value and had to close trading; the ripple effect beat up the other major markets; the Saudi Arabian and Iranian saber rattling turned itself up a notch; and, worst of all, the Patriots lost to Miami last night, thereby giving up their previously assured home field advantage through the playoffs.

So it looks like 2016 is off to an interesting start for the world — here’s hoping things are utterly uninteresting here on Hybenvej, and on all the streets where all of you live, for all twelve months of the year!