How We Deal with Our Beloved Neinhorn

This book is one of Aidan’s favorite, about a Neinhorn (a pun on Einhorn, meaning unicorn) that always says “Nein”. But I’m not going to talk about the book. I’m going to talk about the Neinhorn in our household. Since he was born, I’ve always felt that Aidan is… difficult, strong-willed, or, the term I came across recently and liked the most, spirited. I’ve been wanting to write about this since a year ago, here’s READ MORE

Interview With The Toddler #1

During bedtime, right before Aidan fell asleep, he likes to have a conversation and a snuggle session with me, usually after a book reading session with Papa. Sometimes we invented stories about “der Eisbär, der Pinguin und der Affe” going to places for their vacation. Sometimes we recounted events and activities from the day. Last night though, I decided to interview him, then found interesting facts and unexpected answers from him… We talked in German, READ MORE

The Case for Early Daycare, or Kita (in Germany)

Kindertagesstätte, or more popular as Kita, basically means a daycare center for children in Germany. It is a collective term used for referring to Kinderkrippe or nursery for children up to three-years-old, Kindergarten for children age three to six, and Kinderhort, an after-school care for primary school children. This website gives a very comprehensive information about Kita. Our Kita, Kita Unikate Saarbrücken, is located in the same building as the University’s Mensa (canteen), only 200 READ MORE

Another Little Big Change

We’ve always known that we want two. One is too lonely, three would be too much. We just didn’t know that the second one will be around so soon ;). Aidan was just 18 months, when his little sister was born 4 months ago, so we were in the dreaded two-under-two situation. We knew that it’s going to be challenging, but we thought “alright, let’s have a crazy and chaotic three years, then get it READ MORE

Why is he so cute??

Our 16-month-old Aidan, unser kleine Mann It’s usually 10 pm, when Aidan is finally in his dreamland. He’s punctual like that, no matter whether we start the bedtime routine (change his diaper – put on a pajama – brush teeth – read books) earlier at 8 pm or at 9:30 pm. Most of the time, he would insist that both parents must be present at the book reading session, “Papa… da (there)! (pointing to the READ MORE

My Little Big Change

We did this photoshoot to celebrate one week together, kudos to our awesome friend @sreyasi_nc Today, April 17, was the estimated ‘finish line’ of my pregnancy. But… it turned out the little one got too impatient inside my belly and decided to greet the world exactly 2 weeks earlier. Not that I complained 😉 At that point I was actually urging him to come out ASAP because, my belly looked like it was about to READ MORE

Explaining the Gap

I have no valid excuses: I simply abandoned this blog for more than 3 years, which… coincides with my PostDoc period 😀 maybe there’s a correlation. My official homepage (as a researcher), however, is updated frequently. One of the reasons is that my old domain (paramitopia.com) was expired and I moved to this new domain. Setting up things took a while (not the whole 3 years though!) because I’d like the theme designs for both READ MORE

La Bicicleta

by Carlos Vives & Shakira. If I think of summer 2016, I will have this song playing in the background 🙂 As a beginner cyclist–my first biking trip was four years ago, only one year after I learned how to ride a bike–, I’m quite satisfied with the biking trips I did this summer: Bolzano-Terlan-Bolzano (30 km), Bolzano-Salorno (34 km) and Saarbrücken-Sarreguemines (20 km). Through these trips I learned that my current limit is 30 km, and READ MORE

Keep Pushing (the Boundary)

I was re-organizing my bookmarks the other day, which were just a collection of links that I found interesting… at some point in my life. Some of them can’t even be opened anymore. Anyway, I found this one that is actually quite relevant with my situation now: Matt Might, a professor in Computer Science at the University of Utah, created The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D. to explain what a Ph.D. is to new and aspiring graduate READ MORE

Not So Wise No More

Picture was taken from here I woke up sometime last week with a sore throat, I thought “Uh oh, flu is coming…” However, the pain then moves also to my ear, and my head… but only on the left side. That’s when I knew that my upper-left wisdom tooth was causing trouble, again. Last year, when I was home in Indonesia, I went to a dentist hoping that he would take this troubled tooth out, because READ MORE