Rites of Spring

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned before on this blog how keenly Molli Malou is interested in building things. She was never interested in Bob the Builder or toy tools when she was younger, but drawing has never been enough from her: she has always preferred turning paper and cardboard into other things, and as she’s gotten older she’s begun working with string, wood, fabric, pretty much anything we let her get her hands on (and quite a few things we try not to).

By last summer she was already complaining that she never got to build anything real. She wants to build boats and planes and cars. Not just go-karts, but actual vehicles. She lights up like a Christmas tree when given the opportunity to work with real tools, so earlier this bring we bought her her own toolbox and a real hammer, which seemed like a nice start. Also some nails. Also a few sheets of cheap plywood.

That was not enough, so she took things into her own hands: if we weren’t going to give her tools, she would use the tools she already had to make new tools of her own.

The big lesson of Molli Malou’s Patented Cardboard Saw is that you shouldn’t saturate a cardboard handle with brown magic marker unless you want brown palms.

With Molli Malou’s permission, Daddy took that picture of her tool for posterity and then very gingerly dropped it into the garbage bin where it could do no more staining harm. So there you go, posterity!

Molli Malou’s missing front tooth is finally coming in, by the way, and at the same time her other top front tooth is wriggling impatiently to get out. It’s a race to see whether the new one comes all the way in before the other one comes out — I’m guessing it’s an unfair fight, because surely the pressure from the new tooth will help force out the loose one beside it, right?

Which makes me wonder: is there an app for that?

Amazingly, Maddie can entertain herself for up to an hour at a time with my iPhone without damaging the phone, sending accidental emails, or calling Siberia. She is better than me at navigating the YouTube app, where I have filled my “favorites” folder with videos of Elmo, Barney, Teletubbies, and all kinds of children’s songs and animations. (Molli Malou mainly likes watching the monkey scratch his butt, smell his finger, and fall out of the tree.)

When not watching monkeys falling out of trees, Molli Malou likes exploring the woods with her friends Sofie and Fie.

Big game hunters they are not. . . small game hunters, they!

Late May and early June we enjoyed what was hopefully a preview of a gorgeous Danish summer.

Molli Malou and Maddie play together more and more, but all too often it’s Big Sister inventing games that involve torturing Little Sister one way or another. Like this new favorite, “Maddie, come here and let me pour cold water on you!”

But where can you see the malice in this picture:

That’s Molli Malou getting ready for her first kids-only, evening hours school party, which was held one weekday evening in early June. She went with Sofie, and the two of them were so adorable and excited I couldn’t help myself from wanting to publish the whole series.

…eventually, alas, there’s only so much excitement a little girl can stand.

Meanwhile, Maddie had had her first dentist appointment earlier that day. All 20 teeth are in and looking good, we were praised for her dental hygiene, and she got a big new toothbrush for being such a girl. She was awestruck by the sight of it when I told her it was her new brush.

“That’s Molli Malou’s,” she said.

“No,” I said. “This for Maddie.”

Her eyes widened.

“Maddie’s toofbrush bigger Molli Malou’s!”

Then she laughed demonically.

I guess she’ll take any advantage she can get in the sibling rivalry wars.

So as Molli Malou and Sofie whirled each other around the living room, Maddie watched Teletubbies with the smug satisfaction that she had a bigger toothbrush.

For the Lees: Molli Malou still loves the photo album you made her, and likes to show it off to friends.

Now we’ve caught up to this past weekend, which was the three-day holiday weekend of Pinse. So it was time for the annual Kammer family picnic in Frederiksberg Garden.

Molli Malou had left on Saturday morning with Sofie and her family to spend the weekend at their summer house in southern Sjælland. It was the first time she’d ever left town without a family member. She had a wonderful, wonderful time, but we missed her.

I explain all that so it won’t seem strange not to see her in any of the following pictures… in fact, given her absence and the annual nature of the picnic, it’s hard not to look at a lot of these pictures and think they were taken about four years ago, when we were also just attending as a family of three…

What’s she pointing at? Her first “sentient” glimpse of the suttetræe! (“Pacifier tree.”)

Will she go for feeding the ducks in Essex this summer?

That’s a yes.

Unlike Molli Malou, Maddie has no psychological tether to keep her within 50 yards of us at this age. She was constantly sprinting away from our table to explore the garden. She was especially intrigued by the Chinese Bridge, and the island that lay on its other side.

Same table in the same spot, eight years running:

This proud Heron had taken over the roof of the rest room building by the playground.

…a playground which was completely remodeled a few years ago, by the way, apparently with the goal of creating the world’s safest and most absolutely uninteresting playground. The only fun Maddie had there was flopping around in Daddy’s crocs.

Some rebel fun-lovers had hung up a little swing on a tree off a path deep in the wooded garden itself, however, so we had some fun there.

And here he is, as seen on Facebook, the Downy Terror of Frederiksberg: the swan who chased off all the other swans (except his wife) a few years ago. We actually still lived in F’berg at the time and well remembered the summer of the angry swan — he horrified Molli Malou by attacking one other swan so violently we thought he’d kill him.

So once again, malice parading as innocence:

We concluded the picnic, as every year, with a row around the canals.

I think this is the best picture ever of Molli Malou, Vibeke, and Jørgen.

The following series was just to good to pick a favorite. While Maddie sat in Jørgen’s lap, Vibeke made her giggle wildly. That’s what’s going on, and I love each and every picture.

Here’s the Mrs. Downy Terror leading her brood of Downy Terrors for a gentle swim.

It wasn’t very late by the time we got into our car, and Maddie had been running a mile a minute right up until the time we strapped her in. We hadn’t gotten more than a kilometer before Trine and I heard loud, slow, regular breathing from the back seat…

Bonk!

She didn’t even wake up when we got home, undressed her, and plopped her in her bed.

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Maddie is not a good sleeper. We’ve fallen into a trap of reading her a story, then lying in the guest bed while she fusses herself to sleep. We have to break that habit. Then if she’s not in a very sleepy mood, she’ll wander out of her bed every 3-5 minutes for as much as an hour — sleepier on every stroll — and have to be walked back into her bedroom and tucked back in. We have to break that habit. Then in the middle of the night, as often as not she wanders into our bedroom and just stands there, saying nothing, discernible in the darkness only by her quiet breaths and the sucking of her sut. We have to walk her back to bed and tuck her in, but on some nights she’ll repeat the same thing 2-3 times — unless/until one of us goes in and spends the rest of the night in the guest bed. Then she sleeps like a rock. We have to break that habit.

We don’t have time to wreck a week’s night of sleep breaking her habits, though, so we’re kicking that can down the road.

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I began this earlier this week. It’s now Sunday, and Molli Malou has just an hour or two lost her second big upper tooth. That picture is posted on Facebook, and now I need to wrap this up and post it because the new photos are already starting to pile up…