The gingerbread man

Having travelled to Vorarlberg by plane, Jakob returned home on Wednesday by doing his first trip on a train. Together with Sandra and Kerstin he boarded the train early morning in order to get on the way for an 8 hour trip from the Western to the eastern part of Austria. Jakob enjoyed the privacy of the compartment, played and had fun and after a while even fell asleep and rested for good two hours. Like that the trip felt much shorter than 8 hours would suggest. Unfortunately Markus missed the three on Wednesday as he was going to London for the rest of the week and thus he had to wait until Friday night to cuddle Jakob again.

Pretty hard work to flatten the dough

The past weekend was very nice and wintry with first snowflakes falling Friday night in Vienna. Markus took care of Jakob on Saturday while Sandra and Kerstin did some shopping and it felt very good to spend time with the sunshine after not having seen hi for almost two weeks. On Sunday, the first advent Sunday, we did start preparing Christmas cookies and Jakob was very helpful. He was working hard to cut trees, snowmen, stars or hearts from the gingerbreaddough His favourite form though was the simple round circle which he hardly gave away. With that circle he decorated the dough and cut circles but also moons. As our junior enjoyed the work so much we were not concerned about the fact that the flour was all over the kitchen as well as all over Jakob’s. When we finished baking the cookies it the forecasted heavy snowfall started.

Jakob, Kerstin & Markus

Not feeding chicken pocks, but tuna, chicken and beef

With Markus' hefty traveling schedule these days Jakob and Kerstin end up home alone most of the time and thus they decided to fly away. Firstly, Jakob liked it on the plane when we went to Mallorca and secondly grandma Heidi is still dire straits since she tripped, fell and broke her arm a few weeks ago. So Markus drove the two - who were actually a little bit nervous - to the airport on Sunday morning and waived them Good-Bye before he himself left for Warsaw onMonday where he sent all last week with a client. The short flight to Friedrichshafen was smooth and Jakob did again like it. He likes even more the fact that the whole family is there to entertain him in Vorarlberg.

One would question, whether a little energetic 16 month-old like our little sunshine could really make the life easier for someone handicapped with a plaster, but experience showed: it does. Jakob has finally made really friends with Tom, the cat. he strokes him and more importantly - makes sure that Tom gets something for breakfast. Once Tom has finished his meal, Jakob puts away the feeding bowl so that noone trips over it. In summer Jakob still tried to eat out of the bowl instead - this time luckily seems over!

J knows how important food is for him. It also has to be for Tom!

By mid week Jakob has picked up a cough, had slightly higher temperature and we also found two blisters on his body and so we thought that he would have picked up the chicken-pocks - which Anna was suffering from the past weeks - as well even though Jakob was vaccinated against it. A visit to the pediatrician did not confirm the chicken pocks, but diagnosed an inflammation of the middle ear in a very early stage and prescribed antibiotics. So there is a sick bay anyway on the western front of Austria. Our junior though does not give us the impression that he is sick - he is full of energy, smiles and laughs and does not mind the coughs or pain he for sure has.

Jakob, Kerstin & Markus

Just like in Bedrock

Most likely everyone still remembers The Flintstones - Fred, Wilma , Barney and Betty. The cartoon series from the 1960-ies is for sure well known in general, but do you also know how Barney & Betty's son was called? Hi sname was Bamm-Bamm. and his girlfriend was Pebbles - Fred & Wilma's daughter. Bamm-Bamm's name came from his only ever words he spoke and the fact that he liked to hit hard on things with the club he carried around at all times. Our little junior is also a real bundle of energy: he is runing around all day, riding his rocking horse, chasing people and even more so likes being chased around in the flat. Jakob currently is also using everything for making noise - his beloved toy is a hammer with which he even likes to hit on his head - and he also has a girlfriend - Anna. Together they remind us a lot of Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm.

The original characters from the 60-ies...

...and the couple today

When Kerstin had her ladies' night this week Wednesday and some of her former colleagues visited us at home Jakob was everything but tired. He turned on the volume, and provided his best for the audience. He entertained the ladies for a while making fun and noise by throwing toys on the table and using the hammer of his workbench as drumstick - yet again. Just like Bamm-Bamm.

Bamm-Bamm, Betty & Barney

All over the place

Our life has changed big time since Markus starte working again. For Jakob and Kerstin the new job meant that they are on their own throughout the week while Markus spends time in the office in Prague or London or is back to travelling all over Europe to see his clients again. Every now and then - ideally at the beginning or the end of the week - he also visits his clients in Vienna and thus can prolongue the weekends with family.

While we can not spend time together during tge week and only can see each other on video calls thanks to Facetime and the iPhone 4 weekends are now dedicated fully to family. It is interestig to see that when time is scarce preferences are shifted and the most important thing is to be happy together. Suddenly bad news are not seen as so bad news such as the theft of Markus' scooter or small accidents. The amount of time spent abroad and on the road will remain large in the short run, however there is light at the end of the tunnel and markus can spend more time during the week again with his loved ones.

Jakob, Kerstin & Markus

A new chapter

On Tuesday evening a wonderful time has come to an end when Jakob and Kerstin drove Markus to the airport. It was the last day of his gardening leave and in order to get to his new workplace on time he had to board a the OS711 to Prague. His new employer - Wood & Co - is a dedicated regional investment bank and the boutique-type brokerage house Markus used to be working for in the past.

While the new job and new challenge is something positive for all of us, there is though a quite high price we have to pay for the time being: Markus will be away most of the upcoming months as he will be based in Prague for now and also spend a lot of time in London again. Not seeing Jakob every day is very tough and does hurt. The weekends and days with the family will be intensely used and enjoyed and hopefully it wont be long until he will be able to sleep at home most of the nights again.

Jakob, Kerstin & Markus

No pain - no gain!

Thursday evening we left Vienna for a long and active weekend in Vorarlberg as on Sunday the Sparkasse Marathon took place which by now has become a traditional event for Markus run the half-marathon distance. Anna, Lini & Peter visited the Laendle as well (arriving Friday afternoon) even though Peter decided last minute to not take the challenge of the 21,0975 km race as he was suffering from a cold and therefore they used the days to visit Peter's sister in Vaduz, some friends and to watch the race. While it was raining when we arrived Friday night the weather improved throughout Friday and peaked in a gorgeous early spring weekend with sunshine and more than 20 degrees.

Ready to take on the challenge.

Markus' birthday on Saturday was declared a "no-celebration-day" in order to not jeopardize the performance on Sunday and so it was an easy going day on which Markus just picked up his number in Lindau, we had a walk through Lindau together with Sandra & Flo and in the evening had a big portion of pasta prepared by Heidi. Sunday morning the sky was blue and cloudless and when Markus boarded the ship in Bregenz to reach the start area in Lindau it was already quite warm. By the time the race was started - at exactly 11:11 by both the mayor of Lindau and Marathon due to the celebrations "2500 years of marathon" - the temperature in the sun has already reached more than 20 degrees again.

Jakob was the first one to congratulate - and took the medal.

Given the warm weather and the fact that Markus' preparations were not ideal - even though he had loads of time during his gardening leave he did not stick to his training plan but rather did odd training runs with a maximum length of 75 minutes - he started into the race rather slow and tried to keep the pace for a finishing time of 1:45 minutes. After km 11 the fact that there were no long runs in the preparations he had to reduce his pace in order to make it to the finishing line and was only able to speed up again for the last three kilometers of the race. In the end he reached the finish in the Casino Stadium Bregenz after 1:49:23 which left him not surprised but definitely a bit frustrated. The obvious lesson from that is: No pain - No gain. Clearly there is a lot to make up for next year! Irrespective of the finishing time during the afternoon and evening Markus' birthday was celebrated with banana & yoghurt/blueberry cakes and Heidi's delicious Kaesepaetzle before falling dead tired into bed.

Jakob, Kerstin & Markus

Three days - three different activities

Last week was a pretty busy one for us: On Tuesday the three of us attended a small playgroup in the nearby "Kreativraum" during which a group of 10 little ones between 10 and 15 months were singing, dancing, drawing pictures and playing music. After a slow start into the one hours session Jakob was warming up and really enjoyed the course and luckily another 8 sessions will follow over the coming months.

On Wednesday morning Markus' parents and brother came by and after coffee an cake on the terrace Stefan, Kurt and Markus got on their bikes heading out west. The three guys followed the Wiental bike trail towards the Vienna Woods. In the meantime Viki joined Eva, Kerstin and Jakob for some shopping on Landstrasse whereas the main target was warm shoes for autumn/winter for our junior. After a 2,5 hour gentle tour with some ascent towards the end of the journey the three sports-men reached their destination: Gasthaus Mirli, a nicely set restaurant in Tullnerbach with pigs, sheep and other animals nearby. While refreshing with apple juice the four shoppers as well as Ines & Peter arrived and we all managed to enjoy

the sunshine together on Mirli's terrace. The scenery is great and with all the animals nearby this is a great place to spend an afternoon with children followed by good food not too far out of town. We concluded the family day with nice dinner inside and reached home at 2200 with Jakob fast asleep in his car seat.

Next day in the morning we got ready for some splish-splash as Jakob joined the baby-swim course again. Due to our trip to Mallorca he has missed the first lesson, but in Spain he was able to practice a lot and so he was all eager running and jumping into the 32 degree warm water in Dianabad. As one could expect Jakob was yet again the loudest and most active member of the group, enjoyed himself in the water and tasted the water several times. But as long as he has fun, we don't really mind and given he is sleeping well after having lunch right after the course we managed to do some shopping in the city as well.

Jakob, Kerstin & Markus

Meat, bones and stairs

Since our return from Spain we have settled again at home after several rounds of washing, re-filling our fridge and getting into the Viennese rhythm. On Sunday we met with Markus uncle Peter and his partner Hedi, Markus cousin Peter jr. and Viki & Stefan in the nearby Schweizerhaus, a beer garden which is an institution in the Prater and famous for its Stelze - a rear pork knuckle. As to our all surprise the weather was very nice warm and sunny we had a table outside which allowed us to enjoy the real Schweizerhaus atmosphere. For Jakob this meant loads of broken stones to play with, many people to greet and a cool playground ion the middle of the beergarden. What it also meant was a new experience. After having eaten together with Kerstin half a grilled chicken he surprised us all when he tried the real stuff and really liked to chew on the pork knuckle which was half as large as himself. There is no doubt anymore that our junior is able to eat EVERYTHING.

No worries: Its a pork knuckle and not a human bone!

After the "power lunch" on Sunday Jakob did make another leap in his development of skills on Monday when not only he for the first time walked (on all four though) up the whole flight of stairs in our flat, but he also for the made his way down without holding on to neither Markus nor Kerstin but only by holding on to the handrail or moving down backwards. Once the new skills were learned we spent a wonderful afternoon in the zoo visiting the tigers, lions, seals and elephants, including the elephant calf Tuluba and enjoying the sunshine and nice late summer weather. When we came back home the first thing our sunshine did was to train his new skills over and over again and thus making us move up and down a lot as well.

Mallorca - There and back again

For the past 2 weeks we have been offline. During that time we have enjoyed our first family summer holiday and experienced a great time on the Balearic island of Mallorca. We left for the airport in the morning of Monday September 6 and Jakob was clearly excited about our departure as he did not sleep at all that morning and also during the 2 hour flight there was no sign of being tired. He explored the airplane, had fun with the crew and entertained the people in the front rows with his sounds (some would call it screams), laughter and other activities. After the arrival at Palma airport though our sunshine got very quiet and soon after having left the airport in our hire car he was fast asleep in his car seat.

An airplane features lots of interesting stuff.

For our 10 day holiday we have booked an apartment at Apartamentos LEO in Port de Pollenca, in the north-east of the island which is approximately 50 minutes drive from the airport and the main city Palma, both located on the West Coast. Our apartment was very nice and calm (there were hardly any other guest in the complex during our stay) and so had the small pool which was located right in front of our terrace all for ourselves. While one normally would be very happy about a pool in which one can jump into in the morning from the terrace, we were not so comfortable with the situation, as we were afraid our nosy junior would fall into the pool. Even though Jakob was indeed very often very close to the brink, he never fell into the water. It seemed that he had enough respect of the wet element to not get too close.

The pool was interesting, but no hazard.

Our activities on Mallorca were not predefined only vaguely: we wanted to spend time on several beaches throughout the island (hence the hire car) whereas we decided rather spontaneously where to go. Our "home beach", Platja Port de Pollenca was ca 15 minutes walking distance from the apartment and never too busy. Once Jakob was there though, the noise level increased big time as he greeted almost everyone who passed by with a loud "Ahhh" and luckily both the Spaniards as well as the large amount of Brits on the beach (most of them also with children) were very responsive and did not seem bothered by our junior. The same was true actually on the other beaches we went to. Apart from meeting and greeting many people Jakob also got to know both sand and salt water and he loved them both more and more the longer we stayed. Swimming, digging sand, destroying anything mom or dad built, sipping the water and eating sand were the most loved activities on the beach.

Water is fun. Especially if dad is underneath.

Before leaving for Spain we were most concerned about Jakob's reaction to the food and drinks and thus had taken along all sorts of drugs for him in case of diarrhea. Fact was, that Jakob ate huge portions, filled the diaper sometimes three times a day, but never "soft" and thus we were glad to take the drugs back home again untouched. We also learned during our holiday, that we can feed our sunshine pretty much everything: He loved to eat olives with anchoas, grilled octopus, jamon iberico and the peak was when he ate half of Kerstin's gambas al ajillo (prawns in oilve oil and garlic!!) at Meson Ca'n Pedro. The gambas were followed shortly after by the bottle of night milk and yet Jakob neither threw up nor had any digestive problems. We probably can say, that we are safe now.

Just before the gambas arrived on the table

While after a week we felt that the holidays are going by slowly the last three days flew by so fast that the whole holiday suddenly felt like having passed by extremely quick. On our flight back home which was late - departure at 2055 - Jakob again greeted everyone getting on the plane and tried to fight sleeping, but as he was so tired he had to give in after what felt like hours of screaming. Our pilot was luckily well experienced as he apparently could hardly hear anything on the radio communication given we were sitting in the first row and Jakob's volume was pretty high and so we arrived safely at home just after midnight.

"I dont want to leave from here!"

While we are sad to not have sun, sea and beach anymore but autumn temperatures we are quite happy to be back home again but are going to return to Mallorca for sure again in the coming years.

Jakob, Kerstin & Markus

A new gem on the roof

Entering the last third of his gardening leave Markus got some inspiration from his youth: When he was a teenager and also as student he used to spend a few days during his summer holidays doing some DIY together with his granduncle Adolf - applying wooden wall panels, laying of paving stones or tearing down walls and redoing whole rooms. It was always hard work, but fun and great to see something new being created with one's own hands.

The lessons he learned many years ago now paid back when Markus decided spontaneously on Monday to tackle a long awaited project: a wooden floor on the terrace. During the morning he drew the sketches of the terrace with exact measures, calculated the necessary wooden beams for the substructure & the bars - we decided to go for larch rather than tropical wood like bangkirai - and In the afternoon of that rainy day he headed off towards one of his beloved stores - OBI - and took along Jakob, Kerstin and Heidi who wanted to pick some stuff up at Ikea next door. More than one hour later Markus left the store as large client (which meant that he got the VAT back!) and his three passengers a little bit shocked as Markus brought along a huge trolley full with the beams as well as screws and some other tools. The question that arose at this point was: One of the three passengers or half the beams? Not surprisingly the beams stayed back in the store and were picked up half an hour later. Tuesday morning Markus went back yet again to pick up the larch bars which have been cut to size in the meantime and spent the late afternoon transporting the wood upstairs onto the terrace. At night, when Jakob slept and Kerstin had her girl's night out - she is on the road a lot these days - Markus moved all plants and furniture from the terrace-to-be-transformed in order to be ready to kick off next day morning.

Wednesday late afternoon: If only all the bars would be fixed already

Monday morning the weather was glorious though chilly and thus perfect for construction works. The first hours were dedicated to building the substructure in order to make the job of fixing the bars onto it easy and smooth. As Jakob was quite keen to wander around the terrace and find out what's underneath the beams the job took a bit longer and so Markus could screw the first bar onto the beams early afternoon. The first few lanes were pretty difficult as they had to be properly straight but at the same time the substructure was still fairly loose. After the fourth lane everything was pretty stable but unfortunately Markus has killed already two drill bits and thus he was scared that he would soon have to stop soon if equipment keeps breaking at that pace. While Jakob liked the terrace with the substructure he was absolutely crazy about helping when the power drill or screw driller were in use. Markus had to regularly stop and let the junior "work" with some tools as otherwise the little one would have gone crazy and so by the evening ca. 1/6 of the terrace was done.

There was someone who helped Markus. Sometimes.

Thursday morning, Jakob's first way was all the way upstairs to the terrace where all the tools were parked and when Markus started working again he had to shut the doors and work as quietly as possible in order to not get too much of Jakob's attention. When Jakob and Kerstin left after lunch to visit Doris, the signs for Markus were all on "GO" and so he worked his way without further damage to any drill bits all over the terrace on his knees only making occasional breaks to drink something or to give the screw driller some time to get recharged. When Jakob and Kerstin came home at 1900 Markus was finished physically, has finished the flooring and fell into bed soon for a good sleep. Friday morning some detailed finishing work was done as well as moving plants and furniture back to the re-designed terrace and in the afternoon our new "lounge area" was open for business.

The result of some hard work.

Jakob, Kerstin & Markus