Molli in the USA

I’m finally going to make my USA trip post. It’s going to be quick. There are thirty-seven pictures in this post, so let’s get cracking.

I went off on our flight enough on the Almanac, but here’s a shot of Molli in one of our seats on the flight over:

Here she is on Great Grandma’s quilt for the first time:

The first of many photo ops with her cousins:

…which was followed by a stroll down Lobb Lane:

During the stroll I got this pic of mother & child which is one

of my favorites:

Here’s Sophie with Molli (sort of) in her lap:

And Molli with Aunt Deb:

You’ll notice Molli wasn’t always synchronized with other people

in the photographs. She only seems to shine for the camera when

other people have snot dripping out their nose or something. So

here’s a happy, smiling shot of Trine, me, and the girls, and

Molli’s staring off into space.

And in the next one, farmor and the girls look great, but Molli’s

on the brink of hysteria:

The following picture seems to be as good a group shot as I was

able to get. It’s not great, but it’s the least abusive to all

of us:

This was a posed shot we tried early on in the visit. There are some other, more smiling shots, but I thought Molli’s yank at her cousin’s hair was interesting. (And don’t feel too bad for Hannah! In one of the other pictures in the series she’s yanking Molli’s ear, so they settled the score!)

Out of the 50,000 pictures of Molli, only about 100 include Trine and me. Out of those, the three of us are all smiling in only about three of them. Now make that four:

Happy shot with Farfar/Pop-pop:

Yes, damn it, I somehow ended up dragging her out to see those confounded ducks. The guy on the left is Metzger:

And here’s a closeup of Metzger with Molli:

And now I’m in the picture, too:

Here’s a bath in the kitchen sink provided by Farmor/Nana:

And here’s Molli on a stroll with her American grandparents:

I love this picture of Molli with Great Gran, but I need to Photoshop it or something because it looks like Molli’s been drinking:

The girls:

Now I have two shots that are only of Molli, even though I’ve been trying to avoid those. (There’s a third much later, too.) Anyway, they were just too cute to pass up:

Here’s Molli’s first-ever time on a swing, being pushed by her cousin:

Oops… yet another Molli solo shot. Sorry, folks, but it is the Molliblog, after all:

I just love this shot of cousin Sophie. I think it’s the colors against the brilliant white of the snow that I like so much:

Here are the girls holding their cousin up for a last round of photos on the day we left:

(There are some adorable photos of us leaving, but out of sensitivity to certain young people who were very visibly upset I opted not to include any of them.)

But wait! We weren’t gone yet. Here’s a sweet shot of Uncle Gene and Molli checking each other out, then another shot where Hannah and Sophie join their father:

This is Mary Antczak, Adam’s wife, with Molli. I love the surprised delight on Molli’s face.

And here’s Molli with the boys—this was a very important picture for me:

Here’s Molli between Farfar/Pop-pop and his coffee (he doesn’t seem to mind, bless his heart).

I love the way Great Gran and Molli are checking each other out in the next shot:

Next up is Molli getting one of many meals from Farmor/Nana:

One of the “coolest” shots of Molli, ever:

One of the most personally depressing photographs of my life:

And the last two shots were taken the morning of our departure, and need very little explanation (not that many of the preceding have, either):

Okay! Now we’re caught up. I can almost guarantee it’ll be at least four or five days before the next update.

Now, in terms of non-photo Molliblogging, here’s the latest. First, Anne Greve came by yesterday. Molli weighs 7.2 kilos now and Anne was very impressed by her activity. Also, Molli’s Social Security Card came in the mail today, so we can put her to work as soon as we get back to the states.

Molli went to bed at 7:30 last night and woke us up at 6:00 this morning, with nothing but a few momentary whines from her crib through the course of the night. We might finally be turning that corner, which is very exciting. And soon (this weekend?) we’re going to be moving my desk and computer stuff out of the office and into the bedroom in order to convert the office into a full-blown nursery, because right now it’s just an office with a crib in it.

Molli is closer to crawling every day. She’s up on all fours very often. And she’s getting wily: tonight I left Molli in her bouncy chair in the living room for a moment to prepare her dinner. Trine was already in the kitchen working on our own dinner. A moment later Trine wandered off into the living room with the salad or something. I followed a second behind her. Trine was frozen in her tracks, staring down at Molli and smiling.

Molli was creeping around the hardwood floor about a meter away from her bouncy chair. I thought it was strange that Trine would have set the salad down on the floor, picked Molli up out of the seat, set her down on the hardfloor instead of her quilt, then picked the salad back up again. But before I had the chance to articulate my confusion, Trine turned to me and asked:

“Did you take her out of her seat?”

I suppose it’s not surprising she should have found a way out of the seat. We normally do strap her down, but sometimes, when we’ve just plunked her down for a moment and then need to run out of the room for a second, we don’t clip her in until we’ve returned. What’s surprising is the stealth and silence with which she did it. Believe me, our ears are tuned to every possible kind of bump and thunk, and there simply wasn’t one. Somehow the girl had done this thing silently. Sneaky little wanker.

She better get used to the feel of safety straps…