Early Autumn 2011

It’s been a very busy fall and there’s no point in getting into all the specifics: suffice to say that Trine’s final internship, my work at Egmont, the girls’ schedules, and a series of minor, seasonal illnesses conspired together to keep us occupied.  I’ve said it all before; you all know the drill.

Molli Malou has been thriving in first grade and is rapidly becoming a reading demon; Maddie is now the biggest kid in vuggestue and will be moving on to børnehaven a week from Monday.  (She’ll be in a different wing of the same building as her vuggestue.)

Molli Malou’s reading in Danish is now way ahead of her reading in English, which sort of saddens me, but it’s an irrational sadness: she loves reading and as long as she loves it, who cares what language?  She’ll nail English eventually, so who cares?  Right?

Maddie is only wearing diapers when she’s in bed and has very few accidents.  Her language is coming along nicely in both languages — maybe I should say all three languages, because she loves singing and goofing around in a completely made-up tongue of her own.  She struggles a little to assign the right gender to pronouns in Danish, but strangely the problem isn’t as pronounced in English.  (I mean she confuses hun/han a lot more than she confuses he/she.)

Maddie is addicted to Annoying Orange.  Just Google it and watch a few of the YouTube videos.  The same way Molli Malou learned to interpret so much of the world through Barney and Teletubbies and Elmo, Maddie is learning through Barney and Teletubbies and Annoying Orange.  Maybe that’s where the violence comes from…

The girls alternately love and hate each another.  Molli Malou is by far the more indulgent and reliably affectionate of the two, but of course she’s much older and more mature.  Maddie always wants to play with whatever Molli Malou is playing with, and even when she doesn’t she likes to get Molli’s attention by hurling things at her, poking her with pointy things, and pulling her hair.  Molli Malou is good enough not to simply whack her little sister senseless, but it’s clear her restraint comes at an enormous expense of restraint.  One day Maddie is going to go too far and get herself clobbered, and though I can’t condone it and hope it never happens, and will certainly have to punish her for it, it seems pretty inevitable and I can’t say I will blame her.  Maddie can be very brutal.  But the love is also there, mutually: Maddie idolizes Molli Malou, and Molli Malou loves to play with Maddie when Maddie is being her normal, gentle self.

Her normal gentle self?  Was I talking about Maddie?  The girl is a hellcat and reacts violently when she’s frustrated, stymied, bored, or tired.  Can’t get the Lego pieces together?  Throw them across the room.  Can’t pull on stockings?  Scream at the top of your lungs and kick your legs violently.  Don’t like dinner?  Shove your plate away so hard it ricochets across the table.  I know I’ve seen that temper somewhere before, I just can’t quite place it…

Have I mentioned before that Molli Malou has become so fond of constructing things from paper that she finally exhausted more or less all the possibilities of a single sheet and began taping together dozens of sheets to make larger scale objects?

That’s right… a paper airplane bigger than herself.

And they’re airworthy!  See:

Maddie is at the age where she has to be allowed to take a few pictures whenever any of us is using the camera.  And sometimes she can actually frame a pretty decent shot.  (About one in every six thousand.)

The apple tree was so fruitful this year that we actually had to harvest it!

The apples were tart but tasty.  We didn’t use them as well as we could have, but when you’ve got fifty pounds of apples it’s hard to stay excited about apples for long.

Molli Malou wanted me to share this drawing with the world.  Not only is it not among her best, it’s probably below average, but for reasons of her own she was spectacularly proud of it.

Me: “But honey, she has no legs.”

MM: “Daddy, you don’t know anything.  Her legs are under her dress.”

Morfar was with us on and off for a couple of weeks, and we were able to celebrate Trine’s birthday with both her parents and Jørgen the Saturday after Trine’s actual birthday (on the morning of which her father had flown off to Ukraine and I had gone off to Sweden, leaving her alone with the girls that night). 

It was not an especially wild night, but Molli Malou got to team up with Morfar against Mormor and Jørgen in a cutthroat tournament of “Who Am I?”

Trine looked on happily while enjoying some quality time with Maddie.

I swear when I took the following picture I had the whole anecdote ready to relate, but too much time has gone by.  Maybe it’s hidden in there and you can deduce it for yourselves, I don’t know.  But Fie and Molli Malou were singing teachers — I don’t mean they taught the art of singing, I mean they were teachers who sang their lessons to their students.  And the stuffed animals and Maddie were supposed to be students, except Maddie kept wanting to be a teacher.  Or something.

We invited Joe and Beth, our new American neighbors, over for a Sunday dinner with football.  They have three kids whose names I will probably muddle right now.  Their boys are both over 10, but the daughter is only a year or two older than Molli Malou and very grateful for a playmate who speaks English.

I’ll have to provide video of the next shot: Molli Malou has taught herself to jump rope on her knees.  She says it doesn’t hurt, but I say “ow” every time her knees hit the floor.  Ow.  (Haha… in the video you can actually hear me saying “ow!” every time they hit.)

A picture of me with the girls only shows up once every couple of months, so I happily post this even though it’s not a great shot.

And there aren’t many shots of Morfar with his granddaughters, either.

I don’t know where this all came from:

I’m not hip enough to modern pop culture to know who anyone is or what they do, but for some reason I called Molli Malou “Lady Gaga” when she pulled that costume together, and she instantly developed a whole Lady Gaga persona (nothing, I’m sure, like the actual pop star’s persona) and ever since she periodically goes into her room, dolls herself up like this, and torments Maddie.  She’s convinced Maddie doesn’t know it’s her.

“I don’t think she’s that stupid,” I told her.

“Well, obviously, Daddy, but she just likes to pretend she doesn’t know it’s me, and I like to pretend she doesn’t either.”

See, who’s the stupid one?

I love how Maddie comes running to the front door and squeals, “Daddy!” whenever I get home, but it’s a little disappointing when the next words out of her mouth are invariably, “Play with Daddy’s iPhone?”

We got into Tivoli one of the last days they were open for the summer season, and Molli Malou once again rode the Odin Express time after time after time.  In fact she did pretty much all the exciting roller coaster and spinning rides except the Dæmon, which is the grown-up roller-coaster that does upside-down loops and stuff (she swears she will do it next year).  Here she is on her current favorite, the Odin Express:

Yeah, yeah, I know.  So I zoomed in for you.

I was able to get those shots while Maddie and I rode “the Octopus” — also repeatedly.

She is also a partisan of the airplanes.

And the boats.

And the merry-go-round, even though it always seems to make her… sad?  Wistful?  Nostalgic?  You’d think a two-year-old would have a tough time mustering nostalgia, but check it out:

As for the funhouse, one visit was enough to terrify Maddie into simultaneously loving and dreading it.

…while her sister the human spider did her thing.

In early October we finally had “Søby,” where everyone at Søndersø Skole at all grade levels joined forces for a brilliant experiment in capitalism.  Dozens of businesses were started up.  The older kids had to finance their businesses with a certain amount of imaginary currency, which included paying the wages of the younger kids who worked for them — and who would then frequent the other businesses with their hard-earned Søby dollars.  The last day of Søby (“Lakeville”), parents were invited to come and indulge.  It was hell.  I mean, good lord, it was hell!

Here’s a map of the various businesses.  Not sure if you can read it — probably not, but since it’s in Danish it won’t matter for most of you anyway.

We went straight to Molli Malou’s workplace: Café Croque de Cochon, a lovely little French café in the heart of Søby where you could get a croque monsieur, a croque madame, or juice.

Here’s Molli Malou at her first job:

(The woman on the right in the next picture is her awesome teacher Vibe, who knows Molli Malou inside out and adores her.)

I hate to say it, but the service and the food at that café were just dismal.  We had to wait 45 minutes to get our food, by which time Maddie had completely melted down.  Actually it wasn’t the service or the food, it was the kitchen: apparently they had one toaster with which to prepare about 100 orders, most of which had been written up by illiterates.  Better luck next year, Café Croque.

Molli Malou loves building with the “PlusPlus” things, and always wants me to photograph her creations and share them with the world.

This is her village: a big palace flanked by two outlying buildings.

And this is… something:

The next one was very impressive: a swingset for the people who lived in some condo she’d built.

It’s hard to tell at that angle, so here’s another:

Summer was fading, but summer’s habits die hard.

Now, you’re thinking, “What lovely pictures of the girls swinging together!”

That just proves you’re as ignorant as I am.  They weren’t swinging, they were flying.  And they were flying on a plane from Denmark to America.

When they landed, Molli Malou had to check Maddie’s luggage.  (Seriously.  She used the word luggage.)

Then they had to drive to their hotel.

“Why are you staying in a hotel?” I asked.  “I’m sure Nana and Pop-Pop or Aunt Deb and Uncle Gene would love to have you.”

“Of course we’re going to visit them,” she explained, “but we’re playing we’re grown up and grown-ups stay in hotels after they fly on airplanes.”

All right, then.

So suddenly it’s creeping toward Halloween… time to carve the pumpkins!

(The best pumpkin shots were shared on Facebook.)

And, as efterårsferie (fall vacation) drew to a close, I made the horrible mistake of taking Friday off to take the girls into Tivoli.  Note for the permanent record: never, ever, ever go into Tivoli during efterårsferie again.  It’s all Swedes and Norwegians and Danes from Jutland.  Millions of them.

But our spirits were high as we took the train into town that morning.

And Tivoli had once again outdone itself.

I love the next shot.  I’m not explaining all the shots because you guys have now seen like 8 years of Tivoli pictures and know it all perfectly well, but the next shot…  I mean, the faith with which Maddie followed her big sister into and through the hay labyrinth was just beautiful.  (Maddie is, of course, the little brown hat bobbing behind Molli Malou.)

And with big sister’s guidance, they made it through the maze!

Maddie on the cars:

Maddie and Daddy on the Octopus:

Molli Malou behind the wheel of a bumper car:

And let me just say, that girl can drive.  Most of the time she likes to avoid the other cars, and she does that with amazing dexterity.  Her reflexes are spectacular, and she always seems to be able to anticipate other drivers’ intentions in ways I never can.  Honestly, she navigated through things time after time where I was sure we were going to get creamed.  And when she decided it was time to finally hit someone — usually at my suggestion — BLAM!  She seems instinctively to know just where and at what angle to hit another car to make its occupants lose a few molars.

A few more Tivoli pics before we leave that crowded hellhole behind us:

And that’s it!

Not only are we now caught up, which is always a relief, but I have this past week backed up the whole blog for the first time since early 2008 and am about to copy the backup onto our external hard drive.  Because the thought of losing this foolish blog is unbearable.  I want the girls to be able to browse it when they’re my age, to see the first years of their life recorded week by week and month by month.

So I’ll go do that and then OccupyMyBed.