Molli MaMoooooo

Saturday afternoon we took Molli out for a long stroll through Frederiksberg Garden. Sunday afternoon and evening we had her up at morfar’s.

First, this is just a sweet picture of Molli we took Saturday afternoon at home. (Note how the size of her eyes seems to be increasing with the passage of every day.)

We actually wanted a sweet picture of her smiling, but Trine got her so wound up during the “shoot” that we ended up with about forty images of her laughing hysterically with her mouth wide open. They’re cute, but because there were so many it was the exception that caught our eye. It was a relief to see her not laughing or smiling, which is why we like the above picture so much. I therefore decided to try and get more pictures of her doing things other than smiling or laughing. If I overcompensate, just let me know.

She didn’t smile or laugh at what you see in the next picture, but Trine and I both did. This guy was on a bench at the garden, feeding the birds and talking to them in some bizarre language—Trine thought it sounded Eastern European, I was thinking something closer to Saturn or Neptune. It was remarkable how close the birds came to him. And what is that thing, anyway? Crane? Heron? Stork? What?

But nothing very interesting happened in Frederiksberg Garden, so we’ll just skip the rest of that afternoon.

This next shot is important. Look at it closely. (Not too closely—there’s not a quiz or anything.)

What’s important doesn’t have anything to do with Molli’s first hands-on encounter with Blackie, the cat morfar has had since Trine was about 20 (Blackie’s the only other 100% American in the family over here, a “good old Wisconsin cat,” as Trine says). It has to do with the position in which Molli is sitting. This is one of her favored positions now. It’s how she goes into and out of crawls, and it’s apparently a good stable sitting-up position for her. (She hardly ever totters over any more.)

One of the amazing things she did last night was to stand upright without any assistance, prompting, or guidance. It happened quite a while after this photo was taken, in another part of the house, but this illustration helps describe what she did. If you can imagine her pushing herself up on that grounded hand a little, lifting her butt a little into the air, then drawing the knee of her left leg a little upward (thereby drawing that left foot beneath her in a weight-bearing capacity), you can see how gravity itself would pretty much allow her to squat there without requiring the use of her hand arm for support. And that’s exactly what she did, entirely accidentally. She stood there, squatting, waving her arms in the air for about three seconds before tumbling awkwardly down.

I don’t think it was a major developmental step, in that it was just an accident and I’m sure it’ll be a long time before she’s standing unsupported. But it was remarkable to see.

She also managed to reach up to morfar’s ottoman, pull herself up to her knees, then pull and thrust herself into a full standing position. She did that three or four times. (This morning I tried to trick her into an encore performance at mormor’s, but she was too clever to fall for my transparent trickery.)

The weather was so nice we brought Molli out onto the grass without a coat or hat for the first time since last summer (when she was just a few months old and couldn’t do much more than lie there). She loved it.

I think she looks exceptionally thoughtful here:

Until you look close up and realize she’s not idly chewing on a piece of grass as a contemplative adult might—she’s actually eating the stuff ravenously:

She couldn’t get enough of that sweet green stuff:

Her instincts seemed so bovine we started mooing at her and calling her Molli MaMoooo!.

At the top of this post I asked you to observe how large her eyes seemed. I said they seemed to be growing by the day. And look, they’re even bigger here, in a photo taken only 24 hours after the one above!

By the time she’s a year old her face is going to be nothing but eyes—she’s gonna look like one of those weird Japanese cartoon characters. You know… like this:

(But with bright blue eyes!)

We took a lot of shots of Molli with her morfar, and this is one of the best. She just loves that beard!

And lastly, here she is standing upright with some help from Trine—but Trine’s just holding her one hand.

She was more active, rambunctious, and mischievous up at morfar’s than I’ve ever seen her. She was crossing rooms in just seconds, and had an unerring eye for the things most likely to fall on, electrocute, or puncture her.

She’s very excited about all her new skills and apparently hopes not to nap in the immediate future. Three times this morning I laid her down in her crib, confident that she was at last ready to pass out: three times I had to go back into the nursery in response to her cries. Three times I found her kneeling or half-standing in the crib, hands on its bars in the cliched jailbird pose.

It was a wonderful relief to bring her over to mormor’s later in the morning—and it’s exciting to me that that’ll be the routine three days a week, now. Mormor is our official, state-sanctioned caregiver twelve hours a week. She even gets paid by the government to do it! (Now I’m sure my own mother is contemplating a switch to Danish citizenship…)

Oh… and Molli is now nine months old, if you’re keeping track of that stuff.

And still no sign of a tooth…