Porridge Facial and High Chair

A full day of Molliwatching followed by three hours of Studieskolen, so I’m a little spent, but you have to see these.

The first two pictures come from a little experiment I conducted with Molli and her lunch this afternoon. Trine had mentioned over the weekend that one VWP or another had suggested we let Molli play with her spoon and cup when she’s done eating every once in a while, because handling them sooner will help her use them better later. We’d been having a pretty pleasant luncheon, so I decided to give it a try.

When she had eaten her fill there wasn’t more than a few tablespoons of porridge left in her up. I figured she couldn’t do much damage with such a negligible amount of food (I know, I know). She was sitting in her little chair on the floor in front of me, strapped safely in, so I just set the cup between her thighs with the spoon sticking out of it. She seized the spoon, handled it just long enough to draw all the food clinging to it into her palms, then gave herself a facial massage before picking up the spoon and staring at it with awe and wonder. Truly there was great power in this instrument!

Like any bad parent, I let her sit there with porridge in her eyes, her nostrils, her hair—everywhere except her mouth—while I went running for the camera.

While I shot two dozen still pictures and a full minute of analog video, Molli continued rubbing the food all over her face, admiring the spoon, and doing her best to up end the cup in her lap. Snatching it away from her, I was astonished to see that she’d managed to glaze her entire face with less than a third of what had been left in the cup. I expressed my amazement verbally; Molli stared back with proud indifference.

The second pair of shots were taken by Trine while I was at Studieskolen. She’d purchased the cushions and belt-piece for the Tripp-Trapp chair today and had been dying to plop Molli into it. Since she was eating dinner without me tonight, she Trine apparently decided to have a fine meal with Molli at the dining room table. She plunked the girl into the chair and handed her the Borg to see how she’d handle it.

She was obviously very happy, but in the second shot, below, it’s just stunning how “grown up” she looks. She has an upright seriousness that I’ve just never seen in her before. Trine took five of these pictures (she’s not quite as profligate with the camera as I am) and looking them over when I got home I damn near teared up. Molli? In a chair? And look how earnest she is!

Also, the past few days have been such a blur that I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that she is in fact teething: we can see the front two teeth working their way up in her lower gum. Also, her irritation with them seems to be getting more localized on a daily basis. In addition to smacking her lips, chewing wildly, and making weird clicking noises by flicking her tongue against her lower gum, she’s now sometimes actually bringing her hand to her mouth in obvious “ow, it hurts” gestures. That’s probably also why we’re not getting a whole hell of a lot of sleep lately.

Last update: tomorrow’s meeting was cancelled, so Molli’s entry into the world of commerce—or at least the world of video game development—has been indefinitely postponed. I ought to be relieved, but I’m actually kind of disappointed. First Times write up at three months, first business meeting at six… that would have been a hell of a C.V.!