January 2010

First: happy birthdays to PopPop and Jørgen (a little early for the latter)!

I am as far behind on this blog as I’ve ever been. We’ve endured a perfect storm of illness, new activities, outside assignments, and various other slop that’s given me no free time to post. Looking ahead to this weekend, it appears I just may have some time to finally build the videos I promised weeks ago and to post some pictures of the girls from this busy, not-so-healthy month.

To make that easier on myself, I thought I could begin now, while my computer at work is grinding away at a big project, by writing an all-text post that gets things a little caught up, so that I won’t have to explain so much as when I’m adding the media later this weekend.

Maddie’s health has ricocheted a lot over the past 5 weeks. First she broke out in all those red dots and rashes on Little Christmas Eve, and they came and went over the next week or so. (We never got a real diagnosis, but the allergies we suspected because of the way she was always rooting around in the baking drawer, grabbing handfuls of flours, sugars, nuts, etc, couldn’t have been accurate because the rooting has not stopped and the dots have not reappeared.)

She was healthy enough to start Vuggestue at the start of January, but after two days was sick and feverish and had to be kept out. Then she got better again, then sick again. She became a fountain of vomit and barely ate a thing for a couple of days, and we worried frantically that she’d swallowed a little watch battery. This eventually led to an emergency room visit and x-rays. Once we confirmed there were no little round NiCd disks floating around inside her we relaxed and accepted the diagnosis of “she’s probably just got the stomach bug that’s going around.” She got better a few days after that and has been thriving ever since – in fact, this past week she’s been averaging about 6 hours a day at Vuggestue, which she seems to enjoy.

It was sad to see here while she was sick, and it was worrying because she actually lost weight. But she’s back to herself again, full of piss and vinegar and absolutely worshipping her sister unconditionally: no one can make her laugh like Molli Malou can, nor can anyone entertain her anywhere near as long or as well.

She’s still not walking, but she continues to toy with the concept and will often crawl over to one of her walker toys and use it to stroll around the living area. She’s even learned how to turn the walkers around and resume her stroll after hitting an obstacle (a wall, a chair, a table). Linguistically she seems close to getting “mad” (Danish for food), “up” or “op”, and various sounds related to our names: “muh” for mor, “dah-dah-dah” for daddy, and that same old “ma-ee-oo” for her sister.

She’s still fussy about food and not eating the way we’d like her to, but she’ll get there.

Molli Malou, meanwhile, has been thrown into all kinds of activities: she’s got tennis lessons every Saturday, swimming lessons every Monday, and will soon begin music lessons every Wednesday. She loves it all. We’ve also been sledding a few times, and she’s become a huge fan of that. Meanwhile, she has somehow taught herself to really jump rope, which I find especially impressive because it’s the first thing she’s done that I’ve never managed to do myself. She’s just a natural athlete and although she can get extreeeeeemely frustrated the first time she tries something new, once she starts to get the hang of it she learns very fast and very well.

But wait! I’m home, we’re being pummeled with snow, the girls are asleep, and I finally have some time to tinker!

Sherman, set the wayback machine to New Year’s Eve!

As always, the evening officially begins with the family gathering around the tube for the queen’s New Year’s speech.

Margrethe was fresh and lucid as always.

Molli Malou was dressed for the occassion.

So was I.

So were we all.

A tradition I haven’t remarked upon in the past, I don’t think, is this British-style skit, “Same As Last Year, James.” If you Google it you can find it on you tube, I’m sure. For some reason DR has been playing it for the last 10 minutes or so of the year every year long enough that it’s become a tradition. (I don’t link to it because, remember: outgoing links invite incoming links, and we don’t want those!)

Anyway, here’s Molli Malou getting her first taste of James.

Then it was the countdown, and we all jumped into the New Year. Then it was time for the big fireworks we’d bought — unimaginable pyrotechnics in America. (Here in Denmark there was a very proud PSA campaign reminding everyone that no children had lost their eyes last year, and we should try to reproduce those happy results this year. Honestly.)

There’ll be video of our fireworks, but suffice to say for now they were astonishing. I have never personally detonated anything of that magnitude and it was magnificent. Molli Malou was thrilled. (Maddie Marie was asleep, and slept through the whole World War III soundscape.)

And next morning… back to her red dots.

Molli Malou, meanwhile, learned she would be getting tennis lessons in the New Year. Being a girl, her first instinct was to find the right outfit.

Maddie, meanwhile, just plays with the tupperware.

Molli Malou thinks she’s a cool rapper in the new winter hat she got from Nana and PopPop.

But when she’s focused on something, she does have a pretty intense look even in a fuzzy hat.

Tennis lessons begin!

Furby will bust a cap in yo’ &!”%#!&!

Maddie encroaches on familiar territory…

…And has within her the destructive powers of a thousand supernovas!

…so she must sometimes be tickled into submission!

Jørgen isn’t technically 75, but we managed to find house and babysitters for the girls to attend his birthday party last weekend. Here he is with Thomas and Jesper, which is the only good picture I have from the whole party:

And we’re caught up on the pix! Next stop, videos… give me a couple of a days.