Let the videos speak for themselves

Blog posts are pretty scarce right now, as I assume you have noticed. I am busy reaching a significant milestone of my Ph.D. (comprehensive exam), so I have not much time maintaining this blog. Nonetheless, we still shoot videos of Sofia growing up and I am trying out a new webservice to upload and host those videos. I will be posting more links on the Video page -> http://bruderz.wordpress.com/videos/

Here are some direct links to get you started:

Video Link: Spring2009

Video Link: FuerOpa

So proud of

“Buh!”, hope I did not scare anyone. Just wanted to say “hi”, and yes I am still alive. Work has taken over a good junk of it but for now I am back.

There are two reasons I am here tonight, the first one is that I just submitted my second real paper, as usual after the last minute. The second is that in the course of hyper tension, minutes before the deadline, not knowing whether I would get to finish and submit that paper after all, I got an email from Al with one of the cutest pictures of my little darling Maus, Sofia. Although it is Al’s pic, I just cannot resist putting it up right away to share with all of you (who probably got used to looking elsewhere for interesting Jalics blogs that seem to keep spouting out of nowhere).

Anyway, so as soon as Al brings up her new post, I’ll take this one down. Don’t tell here though, pshhhht!

Painful Association

Today I was reminded of the fact that we learn by associating. It hurt. Though it was also quite fun. The story goes like this:

Sofia likes to show her affection, towards favorite people and things, by slamming them with her hand. For very special people, she likes to squeeze their nose, as hard has she can. Naturally we try to show her that affection is better shown in more gentle ways. So far we have been only partially successful. She does not poke your eye with her finger anymore, which is a good thing.

More recently I tried to show her that it hurts when she squeezes my nose that my eyes are shedding water. So I always say very firmly “Aua!!”, underlining it with a face in pain. Coming to the fun part of the story, today I squeezed her finger in the door (by accident) and I sat down with her to comfort her. It turned out it wasn’t all that bad and she started to run off, when I said “Do you have an ‘Aua’? Does it hurt?”. At that moment, she turned around, ran back to me and firmly squeezed my nose. She had a face full of happiness and affection. I am glad she likes me so much!

Sled Ride

Alice forced me into doing this. I really had no time until now and wanted to make a Mega-Post. But she thinks this is never going to happen, at least in our lifetime. We are spending all week at the Claus Haus.  So here are some pictures from the last two days. Enjoy!

http://picasaweb.google.com/ingmar.rauschert/SofiaSSchlittenfahrt#

Go President Obama!

Tonight I really feel great joy and great hope. Obama has been elected president of the United States of America and although I have not been able to vote for him, he has all my support. With this support I am also giving him great expectations. Expectations that he will bring about the change this country needs.

I truly believe the health care and insurance system has ceased to be what it ought to be: a system of health providers that ensure the best possible health care for everyone, and which is payed for by everyone, equally to their means, no matter how much service any one individual needs to draw from this pool. This country needs a health care system that is equally accessible by everyone, which does not exclude anyone, healthy or sick, and which is paid for by all.

I also believe that a capitalist world with a free market can build up internal machinery that can develop a life of their own and lie beyond the comprehension of most men. Like a tumor it can kill its host in which it lives. Likewise I do not think that a free market can truly self regulate and prevent grieve misshapes. Like wildly growing cells it needs some form of regular and scrutinizing examinations to detect and eliminate developments that threaten the well being of its body, the people of this country. This country  needs a governmental institution that overlooks the guts of this economy, and has the knowledge, the insight and the power to act on any sidesteps of this machinery that would threaten our future well being.

I also believe that the United States, a nation with great values, that seeks the equality in opportunities, the good in people, that this nation has to not act like a bully in the school yard, but be the big brother a younger sister or brother would look up to with pride. This country, the United States of America, needs to treat the world with respect and dignity in order to gain their support, and their passion. There is scum out there in the world, but only a gracious leader can garner the support he needs to make the world a better one.

And if we cannot restrain ourselves from living of this earth with an appertite far greater than it can support us, we need to change our focus from a limited resource that has caused so much divide in this world, to new sources. If we do not want to see ourselves going after oil where we have no right to be, we need to show ourselves that we truly are some very ingenious people who can push forward and find new ways to power our lights, our cellphones and computers, our cars and trucks, our TV’s and microwaves . We need to show ourselves that we cannot only develop new technology but also that we can make this technology a pilar in our economy.

I believe that President Obama is a good man, a smart man, a man with great judgement, a man who listens and tries to understand both sides, a man with respect for others and others way of life. A man with emotional intelligence, and a man who tries to balance the divide. I believe he can deliver on these great expectations and I do hope so very much for this country.

As the new president of the United States of America, he is taking these challenges as his new challenges. He will make these issues his priorities and find solutions that are profound and longlasting, much more so than a $5000 blank check could do.

If I were a sworn in citizen I might now say: “God bless America!”

Good Night!

Sofia’s 1st Birthday Party

We celebrated Sofia’s first Birthday part this weekend! What great fun we had. It was a very nice little (manageable) get-together at the Claus Haus. Thank you so much Alice & Mike for hosting, once again, a party at your house.

In our invitation we had asked everyone not to bring presents but instead to bring a framed picture of themselves. The latter worked out just wonderfully and we now have a very nice set of pictures to hang on Sofia’s Family-Picture-Wall. A warm “Thank You” to everyone who contributed to this effort. We are very happy to have you in our house!

Now, the former request, however, we must not have written in bold letters or maybe it got washed away. Instead of returning to Pennsylvania with three little bags, we had a full trunk load. What a wonderful Family we have! (scoff…)

As everybody probably noticed, I took more then a fair share of pictures during this event. I am sorry if I  made anybody feel like a lens were growing on their nose. I got a bit carried away. Though I readily enjoyed it! On the down side, it was not easy to select just a handful for this blog entry. While going through them, I realized that quite a lot of good ones would fit nicely in a square and so this became the filter criteria. I felt sad to leave out a couple I really liked but in the end there just are too many pictures.

What else can I say other then let the pictures speak for themselves. Enjoy!

Faces

For a long time Sofia had a very distinct face: the “Oh yeah, I can do this. Score!” face. Its the one you saw a lot on pictures where she walks around on our hands. She can be quite proud of herself. I sometimes also refer to it as the “Rocking chair” face, because it reminds me of pictures of Emily in the rocking chair (if you know that story!). But Em does not like that comparison so much.

So more recently Sofia started doing a completely new face. I am not sure yet what to call it or what she actually feels when she does it. But to give it something for now, i call it the “Hey, isn’t it cool!” face. Its quite different from the earlier one in that it is more of an outward directed expression. This face is meant for us. She does it in response to us talking to her. Mostly because she is doing something fun and we share her joy by clapping or verbal expressions. Her earlier face was purely her own, not intended for anyone else. This new one is to be shared with others.

It also is different from laughing because when she laughs, she usually does so because of physical contact, like tickling, spinning or flying her around, etc. It is more induced by us and our actions. This new one seems to be coming more directly from her. Its more like she is aware of the “sharing” aspect of the situation. I find it very captivating. Its like we are sharing a special moment together.

Unfortunately I have not been able to take many pictures of her new face yet. Its the nature of it that makes it more difficult to be prepared. I got, nevertheless, one shot of it. It’ s not perfect, but it might just give you an idea of what I mean.

Trying to get a few pictures of her various faces I spend a few minutes just shooting away. Here are a few results, that I think are quite representative of her faces that she can make. Still photographs often have the weird effect that they freeze someones motion, often in inappropriate or simply unnatural poses. Just think of taking pictures of people eating. I am sure you will get a lot of monkey images.

Anyhow, here are some Sofia faces. In one of them you can actually see her two lower tooth and the two upper ones starting to perk out. There are two more upper ones coming, but you cannot see that in this image. Enjoy!

NOTE: The images are being resized properly again! You can now enjoy the gallery!

Chautauqua, 2008

Last week we spent a week at Chautauqua, together with Em’s mom, and also Andy who came for about 23 hours. Although this was not a vacation (Emily and I worked regular hours) we had a great time nonetheless. The weather was perfect, and so we spend quite some time outdoors, when ever possible. Kristi bought a set of badminton and botcha, which we played during many lunch breaks. And Emily still tries to make me play badminton with my left hand. Probably to show me how difficult it is to play with an untrained arm.

Things are happening at the cottage. Dany is fixing the porch and getting ride of all those carpenter ants that had their nests there. He also found an old Tin under the porch, which, I suspect, was full of diamonds. But Dany denies having seen any. He says its full of tar. Why would he tell us anyway?

The other thing happening is that the painter is now working on the outside of the house. Unfortunately he has to work in short shifts because the water supply from the dwell is, as you probably all know, very limited. So after using his pressurized water hose for an hour or two, the water pressure is down to almost zero. So he comes and goes and you never see him. I am very curious to see how it all will look once it is done. I think Krisit said it would be a slightly lighter yellow. It should look good!

Well, that’s pretty much it. Of course Sofia liked the water very much. We went swimming with her almost every day as our evening excursion. Enjoy the pics!

Note about gallery: to see larger image, right-click and select "View Image" or similar option

Hard realization, difficult to put to practice

Hello everyone! I realized, in order to live a happy life with this blog, I will have to accept the hard fact that I only get to post a new entry maybe once a month.  This is really sad. There are so many thinks that are going on in our lifes that I want to tell you all about and keep a diary record of Sofia growing up. For every post I probably have four others that I was thinking about but never get to write. And then, just because an easier-to-write issue comes up, I tosse them all over board and give you the easy’s, the low hanging fruits! (argh, that’s a term from the dark ages, and it still sticks to my brain).

Alright, so much for theory, I still feel pretty bad about it. But, nevertheless, her we go, the low hanging fruits -> next post!

Video Time…

This is a short addendum to the previous post on our vacation time on Quadra Island. The very best of this vacation we have not yet unveiled. So here we go. Sofia made an incredible leap forward in her development. We are proud to announce that Sofia acquired the skills to crawl, overcome obstacles, sit up on her knees and above all, her most exciting new skill: she can stand up! Yippee!

We are so very much excited. Even better, I was lucky to capture her very first time standing up. I toke a video clip of her, intending to “show off” her crawling skills, but instead, she turned around and pulled herself up on a chair. Yesterday she even crawled up the stairs. She is so amazing. On the down side, she does not know yet how to sit down and quickly becomes upset when she realizes this flaw. She then stands there holding on to whatever she pulled herself up on, and cries until one of us comes to her rescue. Going up the stairs is even worse, because she starts to stand up by pulling on the stair-rail, which puts her in a very delicate position.

We have been avoiding the fact that we need to child prove our house until now. I guess there is no more time to loose. It has to be done quickly. Now I even have to train myself to close the doors properly. Sofia usually is in the bathroom with me when I take a shower. After she started to scoot around we could no longer leave her on the changing table, but now, it seems I cannot even leave her on the floor. So yesterday I forgot to close the door to the bathroom, and she crawled right out. Luckily there was a piece of paper right before the stairs, so that kept her attention and she did not try to roll down the stairs. Puh!

So now, without further ado, here are two videos showing some of her newly acquired skills:

Note: If you do not see any videos, then you might need to install the browser plugin “Adobe Flash Player”. Usually the browser alerts you to do so, e.g. a small bar on top of the site.

One week on Quadra Island

We are back, and we had an awesome time. The place was spectacular, the weather was perfect, Sofia a charm and Emily and I got some really nice time off.

If you want to know where this beautiful place is, here is a map of the area Map of Vancouver Island

It is a small island off of Vancouver Island which is a bigger island of of British Columbia, Canada. About 280km north west of Vancouver, two ferry rides and about five hours travel in total. But because of the ferries, it is broken up nicely into manageable chunks.

WordPress added some great new features, so now I was able to rearrange all these pages and make it all a little bit less cluttered. You can find all the pictures and descriptions of our vacation on Quadra Island on the new page “Vacation” and following the appropriate sub-pages. Here is a direct link to the Qudra Island Page, for your convenience.

Rock and Roll

This time I wrote the German Blog entry first. Hence, time constraints will have to spare you, the English speaking crowd, from any stories. Therefore, without further ado, here is a new video of Sofia, showing off here current skill portfolio, which includes, but is not limited to, rolling from and onto her tummy, rocking on all four paws and sitting comfortably on her popschi (as we call her little behind). Enjoy!

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p(btw: its a bit of a longer movie, so feel free to fast forward)

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The last Thai

This is both great and sad news, well at least for us, since Kee decided to go for the corporate world once again. This week he took on a new job that will combine his interests for operational analytics with his passion for software engineering. This is the great news! The sad news is that he will be moving away from State College and we will lose a great friend and former colleague with whom I have spend much time working over nights as well as beer.

I will never forget the nights before the installment of a new demo system at a major international conference which was held in State College. Or the nights before the very first commercial installment of this system. So many things that we did together for which we had put all our heart into it, given the very best we could and eventually make it all work. Just to be left to the elements by some headless donkey. But hey, it made for great bashing sessions for many years after.

Anyway, we will miss Kee for he is a great guy, a great friend and a great baby tamer! Well, at least he looks great on photo, holding Sofia. And knowing Sofia, we will not discredit him for the lack of a smile on Sofia’s face.

All the best man! We hope to make it to your wedding, someday

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Forget about spring! It is summer!

What a gorgeous day! Sunny, blue sky, temperatures like summer and above all Saturday! After leaving one of our attic windows unfixed throughout the winter I finally got my hands back on it and glued it back together and putted new glassing on it. (I know, this winter we literately have been blowing our money out of the window). In the meanwhile Emily cleaned up and scrubbed our back porch, which had been deteriorating into a dump over the winter. And so we celebrated this great summer day by eating outside for the first time this year and the first time in the life of Sofia. She had great fun being outside. She is such a good girl now! She is sitting in her high chair and enjoying a tremendous mess from chewing on rice bars, while we are eating as well. She also got her first impression on how to roll over on high grass (unfortunately we were not quick enough with the camera to demonstrate). However, since we did get a new ultra slim camera for Emily, we did get a bunch of snapshots from todays activities. Enjoy! (btw, the fact that Sofia is wearing three different outfits in these pictures is due to her “blow outs” which we seem to be seeing more often than not in close, consecutive bursts

Ricebrei

A quick update on Sofia’s developmental front. I am not sure whether it struck her while we were still in Germany (and then cleverly hide the fact) or whether it happened back in the new world, but … tada, tada, … Sofia is rolling off her tummy. She really hates being on her tummy soo, soo much that this skill must have been way up on her priority list. Within two days she managed to do it slowly and gracefully. It has a one hundred precent hit rate. And she is back on her back in the matter of seconds.

There is no stopping her, anymore. The days of tummy exercises are over – once and for all. Finally! she must be thinking. Unfortunately, from our perspective, the days of seeing her crawl on her tummy are fading away. There is no chance left of showing her how to do it. The second we put her on her tummy, a seemingly automated program starts moving Sofia’s left arm stretching out, her left leg pulling up and the right foot pushing off just so softly that she rolls over with the feeling of complete control. And she does this like a robot that is programmed to drive straight forward, wall or no wall. If we try to keep her from rolling she’ll keep trying to roll off until upsetness kicks in if it doesn’t work. Unfortunately we have no picture or video to demonstrate just yet. We’ll keep you posted once we get some footage.

What we do have a video of, is our attempt at introducing solid food to Sofia. Ricebrei! It has not received as much ardor as we had hoped, though. See for yourselves (sorry no sound).