Easter Weekend

Thursday through Monday (of the previous weekend) were Easter holidays in Denmark. Cleansing Thursday, Long Friday, Easter Sunday, and “Easter II” Monday, the four official holidays sandwiching a Saturday. (“Cleansed Thursday” recognizes Jesus having washed the feet of his disciples.) The long weekend is the unofficial opening bell of spring in Denmark and in this nation of lapsed Lutherans it’s a time for yardwork, summerhouse opening, and the like.

We were fortunate enough to enjoy some fine weather through the entire long weekend.

Summer clothes!

Umm… until we go outside, anyway…

We spent “cleansed Thursday” on yardwork, made our first pilgrimage of the year to Tivoli on Friday, continued yardwork Saturday, celebrated Easter in fine style Sunday morning, then resumed yardwork Sunday afternoon and Monday we had Lise, Jesper, and Gitte over for a very low-key Easter lunch.

I’m going to post yardwork pictures throughout the blog without commentary (unless I have something particular to say), and you can feel free to ignore them. I’m posting them as a kind of reference and chronicle, especially now that I find myself referring so frequently to yard photos that I posted last spring.

With that disclaimer out of the way, here we go.

Our first Tivoli trip of the year was a good reminder of how much our life has changed in twelve months. A year ago, we made our first trip via a 12-minute bus-ride, with Molli Malou giggling giddily all the way.

On Friday, we were a family of four walking 15 minutes to the train station, riding 35 minutes to downtown, grabbing lunch at a Schwarma place in the main train station where it would be easy to bottle feed Maddie, then finally stepping through the front gates of Tivoli about ninety minutes after leaving home.

Molli Malou was once again all atwitter at the prospect of riding “The Bouncy Ride.” That’s the same ride she’s been thrilled about every time we’ve gone to Tivoli for the past 2-3 years — you know, the one she can’t wait to get on and then screams bloody murder to get off of once it starts.

We anticipated a repeat of the familiar pattern, but behold:

I want to put a video together to honor the accomplishment… but as usual there’s no time for that now. Maybe later. Meanwhile… watch Molli Malou get the most out of her Wildcard (she can go on any ride she wants any time we’re in Tivoli all year).

The first visit is always a little barren… the park hasn’t had time to green up.

Not everyone cares.

Molli Malou got a serving of cotton candy that was three times the size of her head.

Finished the whole thing off in about five minutes.

(Almost the whole thing, anyway.)

Another accomplishment: her very first roller-coaster ride!

(See the person on the left with their arm out? That’s Trine behind him or her, and Molli Malou leaning into her.)

She loved it.

And her first tattoo!

You may be asking yourself: what about Maddie?

Well, she did come along for the trip, and it was her first visit to Tivoli, but Maddie doesn’t care for commotion. In the face of noise and crowds and too much activity she simply shuts down: closes her eyes, burrows into her dyne, and either sleeps or pretends to sleep until she’s hungry enough to scream for some food. So she was not at her most photogenic — though, God help me, I tried to preserve the moment.

But the best I could do was the shot you already saw (scroll up) of her snoozing away in the pram while the world swirled around her.

Molli Malou and Mille spent a lot of time together over the weekend. Their playtime has a kind of rhythm to it: Molli Malou announces she’s going over to see if Mille wants to play, and after watching to be sure she’s walked safely to their house and been admitted, we don’t see or hear from her for 30 to 90 minutes. Then she suddenly comes home weeping, complaining that Mille called her a “dumme lort” or had made some cryptic but clearly unreasonable demand of her. (“I wanted to ride in the car but she wanted to be on top and said I should push and I tried to push but she was too heavy and she wouldn’t let me ride on top!”) 20-30 minutes later Mille will ring our doorbell (or come galloping through the hedges, across our lawn, and into the living room door) with some token of appeasement, and we’ll then have the two girls running gleefully around our house for another 30-60 minutes, at which point a wailing Mille invevitably runs home weeping without any explanation, and Molli Malou explains unhelpfully that “Mille just wanted to go home.”

They love each other wildly, are ferociously jealous of one another, fight like wildcats, and can’t bear to be apart or together for any length of time — like a married couple in a romantic comedy.

As those of you who follow Facebook know, Molli Malou and Mille got into a scrape with the older boy across the street on Easter. There were no grownups at the scene of the crime – either crime, for there were apparently two conflicts several hours apart – but apparently the girls wanted to play with Patrick (the kid across the street), who was playing in his yard with Mille’s older brother Christian. He didn’t reciprocate the interest and apparently tried to chase them off. Both girls fell as they fled, skinning their little knees, and Patrick caught up to them and pulled their hair. How hard? With what intent? We’ll never know.

But I’m ahead of myself. Back to Easter. Trine and Molli Malou worked very hard to decorate the house for Easter. They even trimmed the Easter tree without me.

But they let me hang around for the egg dyeing.

And guess what? I’ll tell you in the words Molli Malou used to tell us, eye-rubbingly early on Easter morning, “GUESS WHAT! GUESS WHAT! THE EASTER BUNNY CAME AND HE LEFT CANDY IN MY ROOM IT WAS THERE WHEN I WOKE UP AND THE EGGS, THE EGGS THAT WE PAINTED, THEY’RE GONE!”

Well, sure, but he didn’t steal them, sweetie… He hid them in the yard. (“Why did he do that?” “He’s a little crazy.” “Okay.” “Go find them.”)

Aaargh! Maddie’s first Easter! What was she up to on her first little Easter?

Those of you plugged into facebook are familiar with this shot:

But here’s one Molli Malou and I made together a few days later:

Talented girl! She’s like Salomé and John the Baptist rolled into one!

The front hedge was ill, is the thing. The bottom was thinning out too much so we had to take about a foot of the top. That’s why there are so many pictures of it. Wait til you see the pictures next week or so… I’ve really cut the thing down.

Maddie’s getting better at her headlifts.

Maddie’s getting better at everything, actually. It’s still hell getting her to eat as much as she should, but she’s crapping every day or two (as long as we dose her with laxatives) and is as happy and smiley a baby as we could hope for. And pretty good about sleeping through the nights.

I did get a picture of Maddie with Lise when she, Jesper, and Gitte came by for lunch, but didn’t manage to get Maddie with Jesper or Gitte.

Weather forecast is for beautiful weather the next week, so hopefully there’ll be lots of pictures of the beautiful girls in natural lighting. And hopefully Molli Malou will learn to sleep with the sun out before long — the only reason I’ve been editing this tonight is she’s kept us up because she refuse to sleep while the sun is up. It gets dark around nine now, but it’s staying light later and later so she’s going to have to deal with this thing soon or we’re going to end up crushing barbituates into her dinner.

Or ours… hm…