Father's Day Spectacular - Nagan of Copenhagen

…and I mean that in both senses: this is going to a Father’s Day smorgasbord of Molli, and this was a spectacular Father’s Day.

Trine says I always say I’m going to keep it brief and then I never do, and a quick look at previous entries confirms the annoying accuracy of her opinion. So although I’d like to be brief, I’m going to let myself indulge in the glow of my first father’s day as an excuse to make myself relax and not stress over tomorrow’s oral exam. The length of this post will therefore be a matter of indifference.

We begin with Saturday evening’s visit to Tivoli. It was the first time the three of us had gone alone as a family unit in a long time, and it was the first time ever that Molli seemed to realize this was no ordinary place. Look at the awe as she gets the first close-up look of her life at a carousel.

Compare that to the girl who made her first visit to Tivoli in mid-August of last year:

We didn’t think she was old enough to appreciate riding the carousel, though, so we just meandered through the park and made our way to the playground. She couldn’t wait to get up on the inflatable trampoline. (The pronoun in that sentence can be assigned however you like.)

The next photo is the best trampoline shot I got of Molli, and I apologize for having cut off the top of Trine’s head. It’s not bad cropping: it’s just how the photo came out. Cut me some slack, they were bouncing.

Next came the toddler carousel, a little thing with four painted horses that required parental power to revolve. Molli was just a little too small for it.

The next plaything was two large, rounded sheets of finished plywood between which a short step-ladder led up to a kind of dry basin. I didn’t really understand the point of it. “Climb up the ladder and stand in the basin, kiddies! Then climb out of the basin and back down the ladder. Hooray!” I think it’s a peculiarly Danish amusement, because as you can see in this picture the main point of the thing seems to be the lovely view it affords:

Sadly, instead of awakening Molli’s superior Danish aesthetics, it only seemed to bring out her inner American philistine:

Then came the slide. It was a small slide, but when I plunked Molli down on it she trembled with fear and seized the side with both hands, wailing in protest. I pried her fingers loose, laid her down on her back, and guided her down gently. She smiled. I repeated the experiment and she giggled. Then I sat her up and guided her down… rapture!

We spent a lot of time on the slide. Molli was especially fond of the base, which she studied so scrupulously we were convinced she was looking for design flaws. We spent about twenty minutes on and around the slide, and Molli threw a fit when we finally dragged her away from it.

On the way back toward the exit, the swing band was playing On the Street Where You Live. Molli was entranced. Then they went into a Count Basie standard, and Molli was absolutely riveted.

She even clapped for the solos.

We got her home about an hour past her bed-time, fed her, and laid her in her crib. She was asleep moments later, dreaming sweet dreams of Tivoli.

This morning, Molli’s first Father’s Day, the beautiful weather we’d been promised all week was nowhere to be seen. It was dreary and cool and cloudy and looked like it might even rain. We’d had tentative plans to go to the beach if the weather was good, but it clearly wasn’t. We decided instead just to take a long stroll.

Before we started, though, we tried to rekindle Molli’s Tivoli excitement with a little ride on a tricycle in the courtyard.

About five minutes into our walk, the clouds broke up, the sun streamed forth, and the temperature rose from passably warm to actually hot. Hot! In Denmark! In June!

Our first stop was Lyøvej, where I realized I hardly had any pictures of Molli with her mormor. That was quickly remedied. This is one of about twelve that I took. (As a rule of thumb, for every picture I post on this blog there are about 10-15 similar ones on my hard-drive.)

I got to talking to our old next-door neighbor—and mormor’s current neighbor—about football and poker, and when I turned around I was looking at this:

Pictures don’t do justice to Molli’s enthusiasm for this little pool. It’s not that she was smiling and laughing the whole time—she wasn’t. She was just absolutely satisfied. She splashed around and played in the pool for at least twenty minutes.

Then she seemed to realize that she was naked and outdoors, and her inner exhibitionist took over.

She cracked herself up crawling around naked like that, and we let her.

And once she’d coated her entire body in a fine layer of dirt, we just plopped her right back into the pool.

Eventually we made our way to Frederiskberg Garden, where Molli had lined up a date with her boyfriend. Here she is awaiting his approach.

She tries and tries to understand Liam, but he always manages to mystify her.

I don’t know what they’re reacting to here, but it’s fun to imagine what it could be.

And as for the next picture… I just like it.

Liam’s a slightly more advance walker than Molli, but since both infants were supporting themselves on Liam’s stroller, Sandie decided to pull it and see if they’d follow along. They did. It was absolutely adorable to watch Sandie pull the stroller around our little corner of the park in broad circles, Molli and Liam ambling happily along behind her. (Yes, we got video.) They actually drew a crowd. (We didn’t think of charging people until it was too late.)