Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas og God Jul! We hope all of our friends and family have a peaceful and "hyggelig" (Danish - cozy) Christmas. We have already been blessed with the best Christmas present ever - our little Samuel, and the gift that Max is doing so well with another little man in the house.

Life marches on, even on several hours less sleep every day. Here are some pictures of our December up til now.

The first is of Max's "julekalender." It's a Danish tradition. You buy the kids this little cardboard box where you can open up a little door every day and there is a piece of chocolate behind it. Max figured that system out quick and ca. 6 hours after we had bought the thing, quietly closed the kitchen door (we should have suspected right away), climbed up onto our bar stools, found the dumb box and promptly ripped it to shreds to get at the chocolate. We did notice the silence before he managed to eat the entire box, so we salvaged the last half. Here is Max, with his tail between his legs....
The next picture is of Max's BEST friend - Magnus. The two boys went to daycare together but have been seperated for about 2 months since they had to go to two different "big-boy" daycares. So, I invited Magnus over for lunch and the boys got to be rowdy together.

The next picture is of course, Samuel. This is pretty much what he does, so far. Lays there, eats, sleeps and looks cute. Not a whole lot of hassle there.

And the next pic is of Max getting a haircut. His face says it all, don't you think? (That's about how his daddy looks too, when I cut his hair. Actually, it is easier to get Max to sit for a haircut then Morten. You can bribe Max with jelly bears.) You can also get a sneak-peek of how I tend to look these days. Despite my best efforts, I am most often in pj's and just happy that I have been able to take a shower in the last 72 hours.

And last but not least, the Christmas picture. It was truly a Griswold family photo op to get this picture, so please be impressed. We have about 20 others of us running to and from the picture, jumping up to clean up spilt water or spit-up or looking bitter and cross, pointing at something or the other. We are a REAL family now. And we send REAL wishes for a healthy, happy Holiday season. Happy Birthday, Jesus!

Welcome, Baby Sam!

Yea! After 40 weeks and 2 days (just like big brother!), Samuel Mølgaard decided to make his entrance! He was born 11 minutes after midnight on the 29th of November, so now I have 3 boys with birthdays in November!

It's true what they say about a quicker labor the second time around: I had relatively mild, irregular contractions all day from around 6am until around 7pm when they all of a sudden went to 5 minutes apart. Anni and Jens came to watch over our already sleeping Maximus, and we went up to the hospital, where they told me I was already about half way open.

I had contractions another hour and a half when the midwife suggested that she rupture the amniotic sack and get the water works going. THAT set things in motion, and 45 minutes later, he was out! Not to say it didn't hurt (good grief!!!) but it was over so much quicker, it just didn't seem so bad. Even though it was around 2 am when we all fell into bed, I felt good and have been up and about cooking and cleaning (slowly...) since we came home later the day of the 29th.

Samuel is, so far, easy greasy. He weighed in at 3700 grams and is BLONDE! Anni joked and aksed "What little Norwegian baby we drug home?". We weren't born blonde in this family, to our knowledge.... but Morten did get reddish-blonde curls until he was around 2. And of course, my mom was a blondie.

My mom had a dream, about 4 years ago that we'd have 2 boys - one dark, one blonde. All of a sudden, all the family here in Denmark is commenting about how right my mom was!

Here the star of the show: poppin'-fresh from the oven!

Birthday Boy!

Yes, 3 years ago on the 22nd of November, at 9:07 pm, our little superMax entered the scene! We celebrated in style that great day last Saturday, starting in the morning with cinnamon rolls and a few presents from Mom and Dad: Max got a new race track and 2 of the Cars characters he was missing - Chick Hicks and The King.

Later in the day, after some good quality playtime with all his cool, new stuff, Grandma and Granpa and Max's friend Fillippa and her parents, Daniel and Mirjiam came over for cake and supper. The kids helped decorate the cake (Max wanted Dipsey, from Teletubbies) and ate most of the candy before it ever came on. They played, both inside and out, watched videos and just had a great time together.

Here's a bit of footage from an early morning present opening event:

Buns in the Oven

Yes, it's November, and it's been a super busy month: Morten had his birthday, Max's is coming up and baby Sam is on the way. Morten is in a period of internship, switching from one unit to the other every 2 weeks or so, I had my exam for 4th semester nursing (it went well!), Max started in børnehave (Danish - kindergarten for 3 to 6 year olds), and we all got some sort of weird flu/stomach virus in the midst of everything. It never rains, but then it pours...

But as is usually the case, the business was also seasoned with lots of fun and good friends. I got a chance to go and see our friends Thomas and Amy (check out their blog) who have just recently moved to a town on the west coast for Thomas' residency. They moved from about 60 square meters to over 100, with a yard and rooms for both kids and an office for Thomas. Pure luxury! Stayed a couple of days and the kids just played their socks off. Here's a bit of footage from them in the bathtub.

The title of this little post is "Buns in the Oven" - of course referring to the appx. 4 kilo bun in mine; as you can see from the picture. But here is also a picture of Max "baking buns". He likes to be helpful in the kitchen, chopping, baking, setting the table and vacuuming. And especially now, when mommy doesn't bend over, a little helper is an extremely BIG help for picking stuff up.

The group shot is of my studymates from nursing school. My friends Amy and Allison threw me a baby shower last weekend, (thank you ladies!!) and my (incredibly thin compared to me) group came to help me celebrate. Right next to me is Stine, who is also married to an American and is pregnant at about 3 months now. Beside her is Anette who spends every summer in South Carolina with her sister who is married to an American. Next to her is Sidsel, who just recently left us to try her chances at being a doctor and beside her is Hanne, who left us last year to be a mommy to the little dumpling sitting on Anettes lap. We were only missing one, Karina, who lived in England for a year. They have been an absolutely great group and I have felt truly blessed and lucky to get to work with them. Just hope that being a nurse is as fun as being in the study group with these girls!

Trip to the Aquarium

Last weekend, we took Max to Kattegat Center, an aquarium built right on the harbor of a town about an hour from here, Grenaa. All the tanks are filled with all sorts of fun species you can find in the waters off the coast of Denmark. They also have touch pools with flounders, crabs, small rays and sharks and a really great shark-tunnel. The sharks were definitely the absolute favorite, as were "the Diapers" - which is Max for "the Divers" that swim around in the main tank feeding the fish. Needless to say, Max is nuts about things that swim these days - especially "SARKS and DIAPERS!"

The aquarium is just as cool outside as it is inside. Here is a video of Max playing outside with all the cool sea creatures and the water mazes. Around the corner from where we were was where the seals live and just behind us is the Kattegat; the rough water inlet off the east coast that empties out into both the North Sea and what the Danes call the East Sea.

Sorry about the wind in the camera.... it's Denmark.

Leah's Birthday

Yep, I'm 34. That number just seems to keep going up and up. How come birthdays after 30 seem more frightening than fun? The jump from 9 to 10 was exhilerating, and from 15 to 16 was a change of life. Now, I just sort of want to ignore them more than anything....

But I was so glad that my family didn't. Anni and Jens came over that afternoon for coffee and cake. I/Max opened presents (got some absolutely gorgeous boots and all sorts of yummy smelly-goody girl stuff! Thanks family!) and then Anni and Jens watched Max for the evening so that Morten and I could get out of the house and eat ourselves sick with Mexican food. If ya gotta turn 34 anyway, that's the way to do it!

And here's a bit of footage displaying how our little man is learning the fine art of sneaking. We put him down at around 8, and went about our usual business of dishes, reading, showers, making lunches... all that fun stuff. Don't ask me how we didn't hear this, but our son was up for about an hour, playing cars, coloring, reading.... all that fun stuff. Here he is, finally caught in the act.

Max also got a cool little sticker book from Grandma and Grandpa America, filled with stickers of all sorts of trucks, tractors and things with wheels. The stickers were transferred from page to page for hours, until they had lost their sticky. Here's a video of the next life stage of the stickers, after they no longer "stuck" in the book.

Late Summer Trip to Tivoli

We've had a wonderful summer, with lots of time to be a little family of 3 for a few more months. We took advantage of the late summer sun and took one more outing to Tivoli, probably one of Max's favorite places, the weekend before school started up again.

Here's a picture of Max steering the train, and another of my cottoncandy eating husband. We thought Max would love "candy floss", as the Danes call it, but I think he thought we were feeding him, well, yeah.... cotton. He didn't like the texture at all. Wish we would have had some footage of that face the first time he tried it...

We did manage to get a bit of footage of Max first driving lesson. He has to figure out that the car actually goes, that it is actually him driving it, and that he actually needs to steer. I think I thought it was more fun than Max or Morten. Daddy got a bit of excercise to be sure.

The other bit is on the ferris wheel. Max keeps commenting about how he wants to get down, while both me and Morten are focusing on how frighteningly little is keeping Max from doing just that.

Morten's Summer Project

Here are some pictures from the start of Morten's summer project: working on his parents backyard. Their fence was completely rotten, so Morten tore the whole mess down, built a new one, and painted it. (Finished product in background of picture with Max).

In the process, he discovered that the shed was also rotten, so he tore that down, too, and built a little deck instead so that his folks could enjoy both sun and shade in two different locations in the backyard. The Danes are mega-sun-worshippers. You live here about 20 minutes and you'll understand why.... So, being able to suck every drop out of the long summer evenings is a huge benefit. They bought all new lawn furniture and really dolled up the joint.

Then Morten built a new, smaller shed in the other corner of the yard that won't take up as much room and looks much more integrated into the new wooden fence. He also painted his parents bedroom, which needed it badly.
He also painted all the wood on the house (it's a brick house, but there are wooden planks here and there), and organized it with his uncle Olav (who owns a metalworking firm) to make zink details for the doors and windows.

Morten is also painting his parents living room this weekend, and they will be getting new wood floors soon after, as well as new fancy-pants bookshelves. They have had to live with the basics for 30 years, and have finally decided to enjoy their own money. (Morten says he will be mad at them if they die with a full bank account. ) It looks great!

New "Stuff"

As our summer winds down, thought we'd update our blog with all the cool newness we got this summer (or around that time).

First and most important is, of course, little brother. We found out at the scanning that Max will be big brother to a little boy! Max tells everyone that he is getting a little sister, but we don't know if that is because he is confused or because he is 2 and likes to do and say the opposite of what we tell him. Either way, he seems clear that there is a baby in my belly (and milk in the other two bumps he has also become increasingly aware of).

The hair is new, too. Mommy needed something a little less heavy and a lot easier. So, yep... it's shorter.

Next on the list is Max's new room! Morten has been a busy, busy bee all summer. As you can see from the other posts, he has been working non-stop on his parents garden, fence, terrace and shed. When I wrangled him here at home, I had him working as well. And this is the lovely product - a cool new Lightning McQueen room in Dinaco Blue with Lightning, Sally and Mater decals and borders. (What, you don't know who I'm talking about? Seriously? I've seen Cars appx. 138,583,479,383,793 times.... I could quote it line for line). Morten painted the changing table, built a bed for Max and we got a new dresser to put all the baby stuff so there is room for the two boys. Max loves it and stands on his bed to "pet" Lightning. Mommy loves that it is clean and color coordinated!

Hoping to upload a picture of our new car (with us in it, as proof that we actually own it). But until then, will have to suffice with an online pic of, what Max calls "min blå bil" (Danish - MY blue car)

Leg 3 of Vacation - Aunt Ruth

The final leg of our journey took us back to Copenhagen where Moster Ruth (Mother's sister Ruth) lives. The weather began to cool off a bit and we got poured on with rain - which was most welcome for me. After having been outside in the glorious sunshine for almost 2 weeks straight, our skin needed the moisture. Think the farmers were glad for it, too... So we stayed indoors and took Max on a trip to Denmarks Aquarium. It's an older aquarium, but is well laid-out with lots of info about the local sea life, as well as some pretty tropical aquariums, sharks, and rays. They also had a pretty decent touch pool for the kiddos. Max is used to picking up just about everything at the beach, (that's his biology minor mommy's fault), so he found it difficult to keep all the starfish, urchins, shrimp, snails and baby flounders in the water, but was just as careful as he could be with them. He also has a pretty good idea about which critters you can eat (which is actually alot!) and those you can't. Here he is touching a big crab - an event he still likes to talk about.

We took a drive along the coast one day as well, and stopped along a remote little bird sanctuary to fish for burning jelly fish. Max now knows that the red ones are not for touching since Mommy and Daddy must have told him 1000 times. So when he sees them now in books, he says "Those red ones burn!" Good boy.

And the last pic is of Max, just crashed out on Aunt Ruth's dining room chair. At this time, it was about 5 pm and he hadn't wanted to take a nap earlier in the day, so we thought we'd let him try and hang on until 7ish. Didn't work - but it made a good picture, for sure.

Leg 2 of Vacation - Summer Camp

After our lovely visit with Inge, we drove out to Calvary Chapel's Summer Camp on the island of Sjælland. We had a wonderful time visiting with old friends and making new ones, as well as hearing some great teaching from the Bible. We can definetely recommend the camp and look forward to it every year now as a well-needed retreat.
There were many other kids, several of whom Max knows from Aarhus, like Jasmine and Jonas, so he got to play all day, every day in the wonderful weather. And of course, all the grown-ups who know Max covered him with hugs and kisses, kicked the ball around with him and generally took turns looking out for him. Here he is with Theis' sister, Sarah, who just seemed to be in her element around the kids or generally doing anything fun or silly.
There were also 3 women who drove all the way up from Germany just to take care of kids for the week, so Max had his own personal nanny - Wendy. She was a mix of Scottish and German, but spoke American English as she had lived in the States for awhile. Wendy made it possible for us to be a part of the meetings and relax. We LOVE Wendy! Here is a picture of her with all the daycare workers and the older kids (the little guys were sleeping, I think). She is the one to the far right in the light blue zip-up sweatshirt. Sorry, Wendy, that I chose that picture... it was just too cute.

If you're interested to see more pictures from our fun trip, or to read about the conference, check out their website at http://www.calvaryscandinavia.blogspot.com/.

Leg 1 of Vacation - Aunt Inge

We've all just gotten home from 2 weeks of travel, visiting family all around in Denmark in our new car. First stop: Faster Inge (Father's sister Inge). She lives on an island located right under Sjælland called Falster. This island is connected by bridge to another large island called Lolland, so the two are often considered as one: Lolland-Falster. On the island of Lolland, there is a large animal safari park called Knutenborg, where you can drive through with your car and see lots of African and Asian animals. The zebras were one of the highlights of our trip, as they led an entire caravan of giraffes, gazelles and long-horned african cows right in front of our car. We had gorgeous weather, so Max really got to get a great glimpse of the animals. They also had an amusement park, with a train and ice-cream booths. So, we all had a wonderful time with Inge.

We also got to see Inge's new apartment and took a daytrip into town for a new pair of clogs (see picture for explanation) and (again...)ice-cream.

Before we drove out of town, we took flowers to Morten's grandparents gravesite. (Father's side). Max wanted to know who lived in these odd little enclosures and immediately took to playing cars on grandma and grandpa's plot. Daddy showed him how to water the plants and told him a little bit about "Oldemor og Oldefar" - Great gramma and grampa Mølgaard.

Our BIG boy!

It's undeniable now. Our baby isn't a baby anymore. Max will be 3 years old in 4 short months, and a big brother to boot. He's talking like a waterfall, both English and Danish...often mixed. For example, factory smokestacks and old cars "smoker" (which is the Danish ending for "-ing" added to the English verb, smoke). This he does alot. And he also likes to educate his friends at daycare and the daycare workers how to say things in English. He asked one what she was eating, and she replied in Danish "You know what it is. What is it?" To this, Max replied, "Gulerødder. In English, that's carrots."
Max's new capacities also opens up a whole new world of toys, like this Silly Puddy he received from Grandma in America. This has been loads of fun, and wonderful for mommy to know that he won't eat it all of a sudden.
The biggest news of all is that Max has given up his sut (pacifier). Here in Denmark, many people hang them on trees, and so that is what we decided to do. Max was brave and hung it up without a problem, confident that he was a big boy now. Later that night was a different story, but it only took a couple of nights before he was used to it. Harder on mommy than on him, to be sure. We are very proud of our little "quitter", and he got McDonalds for lunch that day with Max's favorite - "nuggets, french fries and cola" he asks for everytime. And just to really smear it on thick, an ice cream afterwards.
Max is about 3 foot tall now (100 cm), which has meant that his baby car chair was a bit too little. Daddy is a sucker for quality when it comes to Maximus, so he got a cool, new "race chair" to go in "Max's blue car".
The final pics are of Max being just the little sweetie that he is: he likes to help mommy vacuum or mop (just wish he was better at it! He'd be "helping" alot more...), or just about any other odd job we throw at him: like help daddy build or saw or hammer or chop carrots... you name it.
The last picture I couldn't resist. My two men with their umbrellas. "Tut, tut! It looks like rain!"

Tivoli with Tommy and Ulf

We're officially on vacation! And to kick off Max's summer break, we took him to Tivoli (the local amusement park) with his friend from church, Ulf, and his daddy, Tommy. It was a bit cloudy, so people stayed home, which meant that the lines were non-existent. But sunny enough that we didn't need more than our windbreakers. Max and Ulf burned up their little armbands and rode the cars and the motorcycles again and again, and again (and again....) Daddy tried the bumper cars together with Max - "a little scared" was Max's conclusion when he got off those. Mommy tried the balloons with Max - "high up!" he replied, proud of himself for trying. We also got to try the spinning teacups, but only after the encouragement of seeing 6 month older Ulf try them out first with his daddy. We grilled, we boated, we played on the playground and a good time was had by all!