I’m behind on my birthday tribute to Maddie — the “Four Years, One Month at a Time” homage that she so richly deserves. Maybe there’ll be time to put that together before the end of the year. Maybe not. In any case, as part of my effort to keep this blog more up-to-date, here is an update within less than a month of the previous one. Bully for me!
We’ll start as recently as Thanksgiving. We spent it once again with Steve and Elisabeth and their kids, Becca and Sebastian. This year it was their turn to host up in Espergæde. We all forgot to take any pictures until the very end of the night, and even then I’m still saddened to find I have only one clear shot: Maddie, Becca, and Molli Malou playing “together.”
It was actually a little more “together” than it looks: Maddie and Becca were introducing each other to their favorite iPad games, and Molli Malou was helping them when they ran into problems. And this was the end point of an evening full of running around and being goofy without electronic toys, so they deserved the rest. If you find my rationalizations unconvincing… well, so do I. But they couldn’t watch TV because Steve was thoughtfully streaming the Thanksgiving football games on their big television, and he hadn’t even seen the glorious sixty-seconds of football in which the Patriots scored 21 points on the Jets! (Gene’s not reading this, right?) So we watched that minute about seven times while we digested our pie: in a house full of Pats and Giants fans, it made for excellent after-dinner entertainment.
But enough about Thanksgiving and football and Mark Sanchez being sacked into a forced fumble by his own lineman’s butt. The very next weekend, Maddie turned four. Her birthday was my morning to sleep in (Trine and I each get one weekend morning to do so), so I was unfortunately unable to attend the 5am summons to the breakfast table: “WAKE UP, WAKE UP, IT’S MY BIRTHDAY, I’M FOUR!“
(Yes, I exaggerate. A little.)
You can actually tell I’m exaggerating in the following picture: it’s light outside, and it’s December, so it obviously can’t be earlier than. . . what, 11:30?
(I exaggerate again.)
But the light was more intense than it had been in recent mornings because besides being Maddie’s fourth birthday and the first of the Christmas Advent Sundays, it was also the first morning of the winter with a fresh falling of snow for the sunlight to reflect off.
But let’s get back on topic: Maddie Marie Kammer Nagan is four!
She is now finally half her sister’s age, and will only close the gap from here.
“Yeah, Daddy, but I will always be the big sister.”
That’s right, honey. Never let her forget it. Thanks to modern technology, you can rub it in her face 40 years from now that without your help, she wouldn’t have known what the hell half those things in her new Doctor Kit actually were.
Although she had no trouble adapting to her first set of high-heels, courtesy of Nana and Pop-Pop.
(She’s wearing them every day now, and the sound of her plastic heels clacking against the tiled hallway floor is becoming annoyingly familiar.)
After the birthday breakfast came the pre-lunch snowball fight. Here’s Molli Malou having just thrown one at Maddie:
…And here you can see Maddie ducking as it comes hurtling toward her:
The princess dress she already had. The tiara and high heels were new… and she actually asked for this picture to be taken.
Then the birthday party guests arrived — and there were more accessories: observe the necklace!
Here’s Maddie at the head of the birthday table (actually her normal seat, but it surely must have felt special on this day), looking as sweet and lovely as she very often can be. When she wants to. (And there are David, Marcus, Elizabeth, and Bente in the background).
The birthday party in full swing!
It was not a birthday lunch, just hot cocoa with whipped cream, and the traditional home-made buns with butter and marmelade. And candy.
Maddie revelled in her hot cocoa.
Here’s the only non-blurry shot of her with her cake:
And Nana and Pop-Pop get to join the festivities!
We even played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.
Believe it or not, dear future Maddie, I was at your birthday, just as I have been at all your many celebrations and events: unfortunately I have spent too much time behind the camera and not enough in front of it. I will make it my New Year’s Resolution to appear more often in photographs with you.
Eventually the guests all left (I’m assuming everyone reading this blog recognized Vibeke and Jørgen, whom I did not point out explicitly). Then it was time to transition from birthday party to first Sunday of Advent: “så tænder vi et lys i kæld. . .”
Then it snowed at least a little bit on and off every day for the next seven days, not really accumulating much, just not going away. Then the following Sunday, this past one, we got slammed.
(That’s Molli Malou and best friend Sofie, by the way, not Maddie.)
That same Sunday Molli Malou participated in her first St. Lucia procession and concert at Værløse Church. Here’s a shot from where we were seated:
For the procession, of course, the lights were dimmed, everyone hushed, and you could here the girls singing from the hallway off to the right of the space you see in the picture. They came in and filed through the aisles with stunning innocence and simplicity, singing the Lucia song, each of them focused on one thing and one thing only as they bore their candles with such unutterable grace: not lighting themselves on fire.
I love the following picture of Molli Malou for at least a thousand reasons (her not being on fire certainly among the top five) — most of you have seen it on Facebook, but here it is again for the permanent record:
And here’s the Children’s Chorus, backed up by the grown-up chorus, singing some carols.
And we conclude with a shot of just the children’s chorus:
Worth noting: it’s not the girls’ chorus or choir. It’s Børnekor: “Children’s Choir.” But if they’re going to make them wear scarves like that, it’ll probably be a girls’ choir for a while yet…
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We are ramping up for the holidays now — Christmas and New Year’s, I should say, in case you mistook us for the forward-thinking kind of family already bracing for Easter and the Fourth of July. There are julefrokoster to attend, presents to buy, trees to decorate, candles to light, and fireworks to detonate. All of these things will hopefully make themselves manifest on these electric pages in the weeks to come, for the time being I declare myself caught up and ready to enter the season without this blog hanging over my conscience.
Notes for the permanent record: on the medical side, Maddie apparently has winter-weather-related eczema that manifests itself mostly as pimply rashes on her face, neck, and chest. A little lotion takes care of it. Since she also breaks out into horrible rashes from minor mosquito and other bug bites, we need to assume she just has very sensitive skin. No sign of allergies, just high sensitivity.
Maddie has also proved to be so proud of being four that it’s given us — or at least me — a powerful persuasion tactic with her: it was okay for her to get out of bed and sneak into ours in the middle of the night sometimes when she was three, but now that she’s four she’s too grown up for that. It was okay to cry about difficult puzzles when she was three, but big old four-year-olds are too grown up for that. Three-year-olds can whine and whimper when getting their hair washed: four-year-olds are so mature they just love the feeling of clean and go, “mmmm.” She accepts all of these dubious contentions uncritically — and is so far living up to them!
Molli Malou is becoming quite a little jester. She seems to have a knack for making her peers (and many adults), and it’s a knack she likes to exploit. She’s always cracking jokes and has a surprising (for her age) ability to perceive the ridiculousnesses around her and point them out in entertaining ways. Obviously Trine and I disapprove of this and will do everything in our power to make her a more serious person. She is also at the age where she is introducing Trine and me to popular culture phenomena before we encounter them ourselves: it was she who introduced us to Gangnam Style, which is now the most-viewed YouTube video in the history of the world. Maybe I mentioned that previously.
Great update. Keep them coming. AML Pop-pop (Dad to some)