Thursday Stuff

It's going to be a day or two until I get the camera to the authorized Canon repair place, but I've learned that I can shoot without a problem as long as the auto-flash is turned off.

Which means you have a chance to see how Molli helps her father with his Danish homework:



More importantly, you can see pictures taken just moments ago as Molli squirmed around on the couch with a toy. It's kind of a fun series—you can see some different emotions at play:





Last night we strolled Molli over to her cousin's (that is, David & Bente's) for a barbecue dinner. Besides Molli and Elizabeth, there were lots of other babies—the fruits of the Io Baby Boom this past spring (Elizabeth was the last of four born within a few weeks of each other). The other babies were huge. It was a nice chance for Trine to talk to a bunch of moms and me to talk to a bunch of dads—reassuring to know that Molli's acne is not only normal, it's actually light and will probably get a lot worse before it gets better; reassuring to know that JP was sure his son was blind and deaf for the first month or two because he just didn't seem to react to anything (he is now a maniac); reassuring to hear other parents articulate their fears that they'd given their kids misshapen heads by letting them sleep wrong; and beyond reassuring to hear them all say, when looking at Molli, "she's bigger than [name] was at birth!"

Trine measured Molli yesterday and thinks she's 50 cm long. We'll get a new weight tomorrow from Anne Greve when she comes for her weekly visit. (By the way, Americans, the "visiting nurse" thing has nothing to do with Molli being a preemie. The "visiting nurse" thing is just part of the Danish social health care system. Everyone gets it after childbirth. They're nurses with an extra year of education.)

Now I'm running late on my day and we have to try and get out to the church to put in our request to have "Molli with an I" added to the Kirkebog, the Danish compendium of approved names. Until we get official approval for Molli's name, we can't get the papers we need to submit to the American consulate to get her registered as an American. So for the time being, she's entirely Danish. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

Out of time...