Visit home and good friends

One of the highlights from my trip home was seeing two of Anahita and my closest friends from childhood, Kelly and Lisa. Kelly just had a baby boy 4 months ago, so it was the first time we all got to meet him. She's already looking great and seems very happy as a new mommy. Lisa isn't a mommy yet, but she's the aunt of a cute niece Cyrus's age, so she came over with Lisa to play. It was a lot of fun.

-Shirin

Kelly and Quinn. I think he looks just like her.

He has naturally wild blond hair that always makes him a bed head.

Tita and Kelly were the best of friends as children.

Lisa taking pictures of Cyrus and Kassidy (her niece).

First try with the girls and babies. Oops...Quinn wasn't looking.

Second try. Oops, Cyrus stopped looking. Oh well. It's cute anyway.

Doing puzzles after everyone left. Cyrus has finally had something click in his head and can do puzzles. I'm loving it.

Tita and I got home late Saturday night with Cyrus and were all tired on Sunday. Gabriel took Cyrus to Best Buy last night to let me rest and brought home a very asleep baby. I can't believe he's almost as long as the couch now!

Vacation week

My last rotation was only 2 weeks long, so I just scheduled one of my 3-one week vacations for this time. It worked well, because Anahita was able to come home from CA for the whole week and my mom was able to take off from work. We are celebrating Thanksgiving now, since we neither of us kids will be home with them for the real holiday (Tita will be in CA and I'll be in FL with my other family).
On my way to pick Tita up from the airport in ATL, I stopped by and visited two of my oldest friends, Amy and Lanie, who only live about 15 min from the airport. Amy just got back from travels to Ghana, Vietnam, and Italy, and I hadn't seen either of them for several months. They hadn't seen Cyrus in a while either, so we had a great time playing and talking until Tita's flight arrived.
Here are pictures from the last few days.
-Shirin

Amy was giving me some of her hand-me-downs and Cyrus took advantage of the empty box.

Cyrus loves to open and close doors. He made himself at home outside on Amy's balcony.

In jail, looking over part of Atlanta.

Opening and closing doors is so fun!

Somehow, Amy had some bubbles lying around.

Cyrus was concentrating very hard on Lanie while she blew him bubbles.

Wheee! Bubbles!

These girls were like our sisters growing up next door to us our first 12 years of life. It was great to see them again.

Then, it was off to the airport to pick Tita up and bring her home. Yay...we're all together, finally!

Anytime Cyrus takes a nap, we try to sneak in a game of Catan. It's a family favorite of both the Modaresis and Beals. Notice Gabriel drinking a glass of Persian tea. He said it wasn't as bad as he thought it would be (he hates tea and coffee). It made us all happy, since my dad offers him a glass of tea every day he's in our house, no matter how many times Gabriel has told him "no thanks." It's kind of a joke at this point.

The weather has been chilly but nice. Cyrus' new obsession is to go outside to look for birds. There I found them in the front yard watching a doggie across the street.

Thanksgiving dinner in the making! (Dont' worry; the pickle jar is not part of the meal, just my snack).

As always, Gabriel is ready to eat some lovely meal prepared by the women of the household.

Yum! It was all good, except for the stuffing that was made with a new type of bread (wheat)...sorry, it was not the stuffing I remember and love! I'm going back to white bread next year for sure.

Cyrus has decided he doesn't like to eat most foods he used to, so here's Baba trying to feed him some fruit. Since he used to be such a good eater, I have had to suddenly try to come up with ways to get him to eat like a normal kid again. So far, giving him NO snacks throughout the day and only letting him eat 3 meals a day has worked very well. Just get him hungry!

He also loves spoons a lot. My parents taught him to make noises with two of them while he dances to Persian music. It's very cute.

Playing on his new fire truck. My dad buys him more toys than he ever did for us, I have to say.

On Tuesday, we needed to get out of the house, so we headed to Cherry Park for some playground fun.

He loves sliding. He's gotten to the point of being able to do it himself. Fun.

Playing in the leaves with sticks and leaves.

Sportin' his grandma's visor.

OK, all done with it now.

Last night, Anahita, Cyrus, and I went over to Lisa's parent's house to visit with them. Her new niece was there to play with Cyrus. She's almost exactly Cyrus' age and very cute and talkative.

She looks so much like Lisa did whens she was little. It's uncanny.

Videos

We're all in Rock Hill right now, but I still have some videos from Athens to post. I'll post some pics of our time here in RH in a little while. We're having too much fun cooking Thanksgiving dinner for me to sit and post too much right now.
-Shirin


Playing with his favorite blankets.



Playing with his stuffed animals, one of which is my childhood teddy bear.



Playing with Erik and getting excited about his Daddy coming home.



Learning to be the greatest Beal wrestler yet.



Playing outside this morning in my parent's backyard.

Happy Halloween

Gabriel takes Halloween seriously every year and we always dress up, thanks to him. This year, we were both video game characters (Nico from Grand Theft Auto IV and Chun-Li from Street Fighter) and Cyrus was a banana. We went to a party for a few hours and enjoyed all the funny costumes.

-Shirin

"What is on my head?"

Yes, my dear, you are a banana. Shout out to Uncle Casey aka The Man In The Banana Suit

Cutsies.

Chun-li is gonna get you!

Niko, the Russian guy in Grand Theft Auto.

Mr Banana.

Hi-yah!

At the party, Cyrus met a dog with the same costume as him. How embarrassing.

Some dressed up friends from school.

Videos as per the request of my sis

Here are three from today. Tita needs her Cyrus fix.

Fear-mongering against vaccines

As with all things, Jon Stewart says it best:

Diagnostic Pathology

I'm on another laboratory rotation right now. There are pros and cons to it. Cons include not doing clinical stuff with animals, taking written tests, and sometimes dealing with gross stuff (like right now), while pros include having a 9-5 job and not having in-patients to deal with. I also like the topics (Anatomic and Clinical Pathology), which are very pertinent despite not involving live animals.

Right now, I am learning to do autopsies on dead pets and farm animals. It's a necessary skill for any veterinarian to have, in case we need to do one after a patient dies, and we can't figure out why. We collect tissues from their organs and send them in for biopsy, as well as looking grossly (macroscopically) at all the internal organs.
In some ways, I feel like a detective, piecing together this animal's history and medical conditions that could have lead to their demise. Oftentimes, we get a very sparse history from the referring vet and have to start almost from square zero. So far, we've had more confusing cases than straight-forward ones, but they have been interesting and we have had a variety of species: dogs, cats, alpacas, cows, horses, goats, and birds.

I'm pretty sure I don't want to be an Anatomic Pathologist in my future career, but this two week rotation is certainly helpful for my skill set and for studying for boards. I'm reacquainting myself with anatomy that I haven't seen since freshman year. After this week, I'm very excited to report that I will be on a week of vacation (1 of 3 weeks we get off over these 14 months) and will be picking up my sister from the ATL airport and heading home to Rock Hill for my family's early Thanksgiving celebration. We'll be home for a week with Cyrus (Gabriel can't come, sniff sniff), and then will head back to Athens for the return of real life and my next clinical rotation, Community Practice.

-Shirin

Cyrus videos from this weekend

Animal noises



More animal noises and talking to Cyrus.



Playing on our bed and squishing the poor little kitten (he's just fine).



Pushing around his little baby rocking chair.



Trying to catch and blow bubbles with Daddy.

No more crib for the big boy

Two nights ago, after we put Cyrus to bed, we heard him banging on something in his room around 9:30 PM. We couldn't figure out what was going on, and when we realized it was him banging on his door, we rushed in to make sure he was OK. Not only was he fine, albeit mad for being locking inside his dark room for 15 minutes (sniff, sniff), he was totally awake and ready to play. It took us a long time to get him to fall asleep again (reading books in our bed til he nodded off) and carry him to his crib. Guess who showed back up at our bed at 1 AM? Yep, our little good-sleeping baby. Just walked up to our bed and was wide-awake again. Thankfully, Gabriel got up with him so I could sleep, but the poor hubby was up with the little boy for over 2 hours! And, he only went back to sleep by sleeping ON TOP of Gabriel in our bed. He woke back up before 6 AM and was wide awake, so I got up early that morning.
Those of you who have seen us deal with Cyrus, know that the only real problem we've ever had with him has been sleeping issues. But, with a lot of work and training, he has been sleeping well and through the night for almost a year. I guess it's time for us to adjust to the newest sleeping adventure...no more crib! Since he is clearly able to climb out now (Gabriel saw him do it at 1 AM that morning), it's more safe for him not to have that tall side up on the crib anymore. So, he's got a daybed now. The first night, he slept on his mattress on the floor (before we changed his crib to the daybed) and now he sleeps on his bed like a big boy. He still hasn't totally adjusted, though, and went to sleep on his floor last night. Guess we have to start the bedtime training course all over again. Just when we thought he was totally set for nice easy nights of sleeping! Luckily, since that first night, he's been sleeping through the night again, but he's been hard to put to bed at night and waking up before 6 AM. Whew...it's so hard to be a parent.
-Shirin

Standing with the kitten Erik on his floor mattress where he'd slept the night before.

Pounce!

Helping Daddy take apart the crib.

Bye bye, little baby crib. Hello, big boy bed.

Practicing lying on it.

Helping Daddy build up his triceps.

Jumping on the bed is fun, no matter what kind of bed it is.

And what was I doing while all the carpentry and playing was going on?

Serving as a pillow for baby Erik and watching the boys.

Tired mommy.