Author: Crisis

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Update on Blake

After another break I find my blog again to report on the recent events in the PausHaus. With my new ‘job’ at CERN, I have started again to travel like mad. I am predicting that I will this year get the 100k miles card for the first time in my life. During my last trip (Dec 1-10, Geneva) our youngest started to make his first steps. When Ana told me on the phone I was a little upset that the sucker did not do it while I was at home but really had do do his first steps while I was on my trip.

I think it was the Saturday (Dec 4) that he put his best two feet forward and ‘wobbled’ his first two steps through the kitchen. Ana was amazed how the little guy with these short and column like legs could make any steps, but he did. It was not really much of a surprise as he was already able to stand up without any help and stand in the room reigning the plane. Steps of course were only possible coasting along objects of the appropriate height or at the hand of his parents of siblings. He was visible proud of his accomplishments.



Blaki from above.

Meanwhile Ana also got a new camera (for our Dec 3 anniversary, which we celebrated separated by the Atlantic Ocean as last year; not so good for my credit score). I hope later tonight I will be able to upload some pictures of our proud walker.

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Projects

Hello after a long break! Finally, I find the time to write something in the blog again. The reason is that today we finally have a bathroom on the upper floor with a non-carpet floor. I have just completed the new floor which is a good solution until we will completely redo the upper bathroom.

We choose a floating floor from allure ‘resilient floor tiles’.



Our choice: 'sedona' tile-style.

The main problem was of course to properly fit the tiles around the toilet itself. I was not willing to take it out and risk a leak on the upper floors and had to cut around the not really straight sections. I succeeded and after adding some silicon it should not even leak but I think with more experience I could have done better 🙂 Unfortunately our camera is broken and I could not take pictures. Maybe for the next project I will add some if we get a new camera on time.

To all future visitors: now we have an acceptable bathroom upstairs, and I also change the shower head which make the shower upstairs quite pleasant. I would even go as far as saying better then in our master bathroom.

More projects are already planned and the material at hand: the insulation in the upper floor will be fixed and we are going to have an extended wardrobe in our mud room.

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New Memorable Stories from Marki

Markus is still our best contributor to memorable little stories. Like the two following ones, and as usual they are completely true, verbatim.



Marki observed in the wild!

The first one is a result of Ana’s constant battles with Markus over proper behavior and treating Blake and Gisele not like toys but rather like his brother and sister. One day last week Markus had just finished Pre-K and Ana was still talking with the teacher. Markus took the opportunity to run around, hit Gisele and Blake and was behaving like a little wild devil, to put it mildly. Ana was explaining without success and reaching her pressure point and finally exploded. Markus took it pretty easy and when prompted ‘why he could not behave’ turned around smiling his charming smile with the words: ‘Mummy, I know I am giving you a hard time….. but I know you are enjoying it.’

The other story developed on the background that Markus is potty trained but still has lapses and at times just pees in his pants. Ana came to pick me up from MIT around 6:30pm and had left the kids out of the car to play because I was a little late, coming back from squash. Not to waste any time I had not taken a shower and came in my squash shorts. After I had left my bag in the lab and picking up my bike I walked back to the car carrying my pants in my hands. Meanwhile Ana had noted that Marki had made a mess of his pants and was talking to him and asking why he was still not able to keep his pants dry. Markus did not have to think long to answer that it was not bad because Papi also still wets his pants…. Much to Ana’s surprise as you might imagine. When asked how he came to that conclusion he just pointed at the obvious fact that I was carrying my ‘wet’ pants in the hand and was wearing my squash pants instead.

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Tremolitos

This is one of Blake’s nick names. It has nothing to do with the famous movie franchise Tremors but rather with the musical term Tremolo. In fact the phenomena we are referring to strictly speaking would be a Vibrato but well, Tremolo just sounds better and almost gets it right.

Blake, unlike all other kids, has an ability to underline his feelings vocally. When he is either very happy and laughing full of joy or he is very sad or angry and crying loudly he will push out the last sounds of his breath in a very characteristic and very notable Vibrato (going from not so loud to very loud within split seconds). This has inspired Ana to his nickname ‘Tremolitos’. I will try and see whether I can provide a video illustrating the phenomena.

After using Wikipedia to find out the difference between Tremolo and Vibrato I found that Tremolo is probably fine to be used for this case. Check it out for yourself here.