Walkin’ (and Talkin’)

First, download the video. It’s about 10MB of Molli Malou walking all the way home from vuggestue with her stroller. I took the video on Halloween, which was only the third time she’d managed the whole walk. (Without the stroller, for some reason, she tends to walk much more slowly, is much more easily distracted, and much more likely to demand we pick her up at some point.)

She doesn’t seem to care if there’s anything in her stroller. Anyway, here’s the video:

Molli Malou has reached the silver age of conversation. Her vocabulary, grammar, and syntax are adequate to make fairly complex statements, and her understanding of the world is now advanced enough to begin acknowledging its woeful lack of information of the many things around her. That is to say, I think we have reached the “what…?” phase of her development, the last major milestone before the “why…?” phase — the truly golden age.

In the middle of her swimming lesson yesterday, for example, as we bobbed together a little apart from the rest of the group, she suddenly smiled up at me mischievously and announced, quite clearly, “Malou peed in the pool!”

(Yes, that’s right, she calls herself Malou about as often as Molli now, and then once in a very great while we still hear her refer to herself as Molli Moo. A lot of the kids at vuggestue call her Malou as well—even little AnneLine, who used to call her “Moo.” I am sure there is a logic in Molli Malou’s mind as to when she ought to call herself “Molli,” when “Malou,” and when to call herself “Molli Moo,” but I can’t figure it out.)

Later, in the locker-room, as I changed back into my street-clothes, she suddenly interrupted a little game she’d been playing on the floor and pointed up at my mid-section.

“Daddy’s tail?” she asked.

I was horrified.

“Daddy doesn’t have a tail, silly, what are you talking about?” Thus Daddy replied quickly, struggling to get into his clothes.

Molli Malou laughed, stood up and actually reached out toward my groin as if to grab me by my… tail. I leaped back, slamming into the lockers.

“Not a tail!” I explained. I heard a chuckle or two from further down the locker room.

Molli Malou thought the whole thing hilarious.

“Silly Daddy,” she said, as if I’d been the mistaken one. “Not a tail. Daddy’s tissekone.”

“That’s right,” I said. Then I remembered that a tissekone is what girls have. Boys have a tissemand. “No! That’s Daddy’s tissemand!” I corrected.

But Molli Malou was already waddling away, the subject settled, the puddle over by the door to the showers now vastly more interesting, thank God, than human anatomy.

She has arguments with Oliver about his right to sit in her chair at the dining room table. It’s one of his favorite spots, and she just won’t stand for it.

“Silly Oliver in Malou’s chair, get down, Silly Oliver, get down!”

I taught her that pulling him by the hairs on his head was an inappropriate way to try and physically move him: that one has better hope of success pushing his rear end. But every time she does this, she feels compelled to explain what she’s doing, and why. So you’ve got this little girl pushing this immoveable cat’s behind with all her might, and all the while she’s grunting out a monologue along the lines of, “Silly Oliver, Malou’s chair, push Oliver in bum, ikke head, nice Oliver, get down!”

She talks to Joe, the host of Blue’s Clues, and gets upset if we try to join the conversation.

She’s getting a little more adventurous about getting out of bed on her own. This morning, for example, she began screaming for us at about 6:45. I walked to her bedroom door, pushed it open, said “Daddy’s going to the bathroom,” and walked on down the hall.

From the bathroom I heard her traipse down the hall, turn into the living room, turn back around, and join me in the bathroom.

“Too dark in living room,” she said. She added, in Danish, “Too scary!”

Everything is always too scary—in Danish and in English. I don’t know what that’s about. People can be scary, and meals, and television shows, and inanimate objects. The other day she confided in me quite seriously that her stockings were scary. I’m not sure what she thinks “scary” means, other than “it is not how I would prefer things to be.”

It is snowing as I write this, and has been since about 8:30 this morning. It isn’t sticking—not much—but at times it really is a heavy, whirling snow. It actually began after Molli Malou and I were already on our way to vuggestue.

“See, Daddy: snow!” There was a shine in her eyes and an awe in her voice that are beyond my powers of description.

Those are the moments I will never catch on film, but sear themselves into my mind so completely that no film is required.

Lastly, I should point out that Molli Malou has decided once again not to like peanut butter. Nibbling away at her third Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup (courtesy of Nana & Pop-Pop’s Halloween Care Package), she suddenly looked up at me and said, “Don’t like peanut butter. Like chocolate. Don’t like peanut butter.”

She handed my the candy, which I ate myself to spare her any further discomfort.

“You liked it when you ate the other peanut butter cups,” I reminded her.

She shrugged.

“Don’t like peanut butter now,” she said, and that was that.