Selective Spring

This post is titled “Selective Spring” because reviewing the photographs would make it suggest it has been a tranquil time of sunshine and celebration. In fact, since our return from Portugal it has been cold and rainy with very few exceptions, and it is the exceptions rather than the rule that you will see below.

So much has happened in the time since the previous post that it hardly seems possible to encapsulate it quickly, so I won’t: most of it will come out in my explanations of the pictures anyway.

One note for the permanent medical record: Maddie saw a new ear doctor a week or two ago, and although her ear drains had fallen out (as we had suspected), there was no rush to get them back in, but testing revealed Maddie does have “reduced hearing” in her left ear. Exactly how reduced is unclear — she doesn’t seem to have the balance problems or ear-cocking tendencies you would expect of a child with very limited or no hearing in one ear, and she seems entirely normal in terms of her inability to hear a direct command from two feet away in direct contradiction to her ability to hear a distant airplane or truck long before any adult even becomes aware of the sound.

Hannah arrived yesterday and it was my hope to have the blog all caught up prior to her arrival, and I could have and would have except that a thunderstorm rolled in and prevented me from using the computer. I won’t get into her visit more than to say she’s arrived and we’re all having a wonderful time: the rest will follow on a special Hannah edition of the blog after her visit is over.

So let’s zoom back to late May, about a month ago, for the annual Kammer family Pinsedag picnic in Frederiksberg Have.

The pictures don’t look that different from last year’s, except once again everyone appears to be a little older than they were last year.  (And one new person has joined the family.)  So there’s no cause for commentary.

Here’s the new addition, cousin Trine’s son Matteo (whose baptism was covered earlier this year):

Remember what I said about selectivity…  we have had exactly one day this year on which it was warm enough for the girls to play in the sprinkler:

Maddie seems to have more playdates at this age than Molli Malou did, although that may just be my impression because formal “playdates” were less necessary for Molli Malou when we lived in a building teeming with kids around her age.

In any case, here is her beloved friend Astrid.

Maddie has reached the hairstylist age.

We found a tick on one of the cats that Trine managed to excise without popping.  Look at this pig:

Seriously, it was so engorged and fat its legs were sticking out helplessly and its head was barely visible.

(And for the record, it was flushed to oblivion within moments of those pictures being taken.)

The girls got new outfits for Jakob & Julie’s wedding:

They also got new shoes.

I’d like to tell the whole story of why we were late to the wedding, but I’d also like to get through this post before lunch.  Basically, I put the wrong address into the GPS and we ended up driving through a very undriven part of a national forest.  Trine corrected the address in the GPS while we were driving through meter-high grass through ever-narrower gaps between trees, and the GPS route out of the forest was even more wildly bizarre than the route into the forest had been.

We were about 10 minutes late to the wedding and very embarrassed and apologetic, but we got enough mileage out of the story that I think we were forgiven.

Lisa sent the girls some little lunch tote bags that they both went berserk over. 

Actually, Molli Malou went berserk over both of them (Maddie was staying
with Mormor the evening they arrived), and decided she liked the owl
better than the fox even though the owl was for Maddie.  So she claimed
the owl as her own and we made a deal: if Maddie was happy with the fox,
Molli could keep the owl; if Maddie seemed to like the owl better, Molli would have to surrender it back to her.

The next evening when Maddie got home Molli Malou presented her with the fox back and explained how wonderful it was, pointing out all its admirable features, before showing her the owl very dismissively and saying, “I really like the fox, maybe you want to trade?”

Maddie, of course, sensed her sister’s (feigned) preference for the fox and opted to keep it — very happily, as you will see below.

Meanwhile, Molli Malou presented us with the first story she’d ever written in school.

Here it is (translation below — I will try to make the same kinds of grammar and spelling errors so you get the flavor):

“The girl who was so font of her rabbit.  1 Once upon a time there was a. girl. she wanted so much to have a rabbit.  Hear for yourself.  Mom, may I get a rabbit.  No says mom it costs way too much.  Dang.  why.  just because.  So I’ll buy one myself.  Then she went out.  and Bought a bunny Mom see what I have bought.  Didn’t I say it cost too much    no   yes   dang.”

Very brought of her first work of fiction and wanted to share with the world, but the first thing she said when she saw me reach for the camera was, “You cannot put it on the internet where everyone can see it!”

So I didn’t.

While we enjoyed our reading from Molli Malou, Maddie had found her way into bed with her new favorite possession.

And for the first time ever, Molli Malou read Maddie her bedtime story: The Girl Who Was So Fond of Her Rabbit,” by Molli Malou Kammer Nagan.

When it’s cold and rainy in June, why not play dress up?

How come Maddie is the only one who ever takes a half-decent picture of me?

It had been more cold than wet the week before Hannah came out, but suddenly it got warmer — and holy hell, did it get wetter!

That was the night we were preparing for Molli’s classmate birthday.

Both girls were astonished to wake and discover the house had been transformed into a wonderland of birthday mania.

…and the party went off without a hitch, thanks in no small part to Mormor being able to fetch the girls from school and get the party started!

Those pictures were taken on Thursday the 28th, the most recent of the 2-3 days of beautiful weather we’ve had since mid-May.  As I explained to Hannah while we drove home from the airport yesterday, I think Denmark chose to put on a show for her arrival Friday afternoon.

“Hm, I was all sunny and warm yesterday, but I don’t want Hannah to get the wrong idea about Danish summers…  I think I’ll really lay down some serious rain and blast Sjælland with a massive thunderstorm so she gets to enjoy a real Danish summer…”

Incidentally, while I was driving out to pick Hannah up, Molli Malou was completing the last day of first grade.  She is now a second-grader.

At the same time, Trine was giving one-month’s notice to her employer in Amager so she could start at her new job in Værløse on August 1.

Busy and exciting times — and now I will go play with Hannah and Molli Malou!