More great news!!

My cousin Marjan had her baby today! He was born via c-section around noon (PDT). His name is Arya Monabbat and he has a full head of dark, curly hair. He weighed 6 lbs 1 oz and was 19 inches long. I'm so happy for them.
Congratulations to Marjan, Ali, and Arya!
-Shirin

Arya Monabbat in his first minutes of life...what fantastic hair!

My Aunt Nahid and Uncle Parviz with their new grandson.

Thanks to Christina for taking pictures and sending out the e-mail notifying us of the good news. Here she is showing Jamil his new little cousin.

Introducing my new project: Mentalmagma.com

So, I've created a new website. I'd love it if everyone who reads this blog would check out my new venture. I explain more fully about the project at the site but let me give you the gist. Every week (starting on Mondays), we launch a new week-long creative contest. These contests vary quite a bit in both the subject matter and skills they require. This week's competition is to answer this question: Given the opportunity, who would you travel back in time to de-pants? The most creative and interesting answer (as determined by the users voting) will win the author a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate. You can enter this week's contest by leaving your answer as a comment on the site (not this site, go to http://www.mentalmagma.com). Just click on the comments section at the bottom of the post.

Please help me out by jump-starting this contest. Since we're new, we shouldn't have too many entries which means the chances are better than you could take down the prize. Also, I welcome any advice and/or constructive criticism. You can either leave it on this blog or go to the Contact Us page on Mental Magma. If you're curious about the name, it just came about after a loooooooong series of brain storming sessions by Clayton, David, and myself (the founders of the site). I think we'll say that Mental Magma is the stuff good ideas are made of. :)

-Gabriel

p.s. Please enter the contest or baby Cyrus may cry.

A nice relaxed weekend

Now that Gabriel is back at work full-time, I appreciate weekends more than ever. I miss him when he's gone all day and taking care of Cyrus by myself is also more challenging. He, of course, also really loves his weekends, so that he can work on all his various projects, sleep in, and cuddle with his sweet baby.
We got another nice visit from my parents this weekend but only for 1 day and night. They have 9 other "children" to worry about and don't like leaving them for a whole weekend without a cat-sitter. It was nice to have them, even for such a short visit.
-Shirin

Everyone loves Daddy!

Have you ever heard moms say they barely have time to shower after having a baby? I thought they were crazy, but they weren't. The challenge is really if the baby will be OK for the 10 minutes you are totally out of the picture. I even saw a debate on a website centered on whether it was even OK to leave a baby alone to take a shower! Well, I've solved it! I put Cyrus in the bathtub (in his little bath tub) while I take a shower...PERFECTO!

Voila...a clean mommy and baby come out at the same time! :)

Even after only2 weeks of not seeing him, Cyrus has changed a lot, according to my parents. He's much more interactive and interested in his environment now. Here they are marveling at all his new skills (eg. looking at the little flashing star on his play gym).

My dad is pretty obsessed with trying to ensure that Cyrus gets the greatest amount of cognitive development possible. I'm pretty sure he's doing just fine but try to appease my dad by showing Cyrus lots of colorful things and playing different music for him.

A nice Baba joon showing Cyrus the back porch to make him happy (he was pretty fussy).

Cyrus showing his Bibi joon his famous smile.

Great news!!

I just heard from Gabriel's dad that Cyrus' new cousin, Morgan Gene Turner, arrived today!
I don't know any of the details, other than the fact that he was born via C-section, weighed 8 lbs, and was 20 inches long. Gabriel's brother, Casey, was able to send Gabriel pictures of Morgan via his cell phone, and he's really cute (see below). Today is Cyrus' 7 week birthday, so they are very close in age! Janice is doing well and will probably be in the hospital til Sunday.
Congratulations to Casey and Janice (and Morgan)!
-Shirin

Welcome to the world, Morgan!

The proud father!

Smiley babies are the best babies

A talker like his parents

Two comments about this video: 1) believe it or not, I am told Gabriel was a downright motormouth when he was a kid (you all know I still am); 2) Gabriel doesn't like our baby videos to show Cyrus being fussy, but I believe in representing the truth. He's mostly happy in this video, but a little fussing is what being a baby is all about!

Fun with friends and family

We've been lucky enough this week to have some quality time with friends (and a little family). Here are some pictures of them, plus some that are just thrown in for fun.
-Shirin

This wouldn't be my blog without some good, quality cat pictures. I love these boys.

They've been great with Cyrus so far...not too interested in him and not too freaked by him either. I was downright content to be laying around in bed with all my boys.

Good ol' Daddy has the best lap!

I've taken Cyrus to the lab with me a few times. Here are my mentors checking him out.

Holly has been a real help and watched him while I was doing my cell culture stuff.

We also went over to Denise and Nowell's house the other night to play a game. Here's Nowell conferring with Sydney on strategy.

We played one of Gabriel's favorite games, Settlers of Cataan. It was fun.

Their little girl, Cailyn, is only 3 days apart from Cyrus. Here she is getting fed and burped by Denise.

She's got big, blue eyes.

The babies don't acknowledge each other yet, but they still get to hang out together! :)

My dear friend Amy Vu came over to visit this week as well. She was my neighbor for the first 12 years of my life and now lives in Atlanta. We, along with her sister and my sister, used to play every day for years and years. She's very much like family to me and was really good with Cyrus. I think he smiled at her for about 5 minutes straight.

Burping her new "nephew."

We went out to lunch and Cyrus got a million kisses from his Aunt Amy.

He thought she was hilarious!

Look who else is here!!! It's handsome Uncle Brendan!


Nothing better in the world than a chubby hand to bite! (I'm going to report him to himself at Child Protection Services!)

Lucky for Brendan, Ath Fest was this weekend, so we walked downtown from our house to start the festivities at Transmet, a cool pizza place/pub downtown.

What a cute pair, walking their baby.

Too bad Cyrus is still too young to enjoy this stuff...there were lots of kids activities there.

This is Mickey. He's the most effective fund raising "person" I've ever seen.

We met up with Emily and Beth at Ath Fest. Auntie Beth was happy to see her "nephew" as well.

Emily imitating Cyrus...ha!

Today, we three Athenians took Brendan around UGA to see some stuff.

Fit Uncle Brendan wanted to see our university's gym. Here he is testing out the aerobics room.

When we got to the Martial Arts room, the two brothers had to wrestle.

Cyrus and I hung out and watched (or slept) while they rolled around on the ground. I was imagining him in a few years wanting to jump in on his dad and uncle to learn all the best moves.

We then went by my lab to check on my cells. Here I am showing Bren and Gabriel the coolest part of my lab: the liquid nitrogen tank.

A good blog about our last weekend in Rock Hill

My mom finally blogged about our trip to RH last weekend. I like reading about events that we both go to and blog about on my mom's blog b/c her version is inevitably different. Take a look, if you are so inclined.
-Shirin

We're back

And the answers are revealed...

Anahita
Gabriel

Shirin

Cyrus

Peek a boo

We're finally getting through to him a bit. How fun!

Baby guessing game!

Just for fun, see if you can guess who these babies are. Your options are limited to Modaresis and Beals, and I don't have access to all baby pictures, so you can use deductive logic. Some of the parents may have a distinct advantage.

Dancing to Persian music

This really seemed to make him happy!

Our first trip to Rock Hill as a family of three.

We finally felt ready for a short road trip with the new baby this weekend and decided to go visit my parents for Father's Day. It's about a 3.5 hour trip, so it's doable for a weekend visit. Since Cyrus eats about every 2-3 hours, we had to stop in the middle for about 40 minutes to breastfeed him and change his diaper (I can't imagine how much we'd have to stop for a longer trip), but it went pretty smoothly otherwise. I tried to sleep a little in the back seat while Cyrus slept and Gabriel drove, but I found it difficult. You'd think getting so little sleep at night would've helped, but it didn't. Oh well. I've been getting more rest now that I'm home.
It's been a nice visit, and we've had lots of people to see and introduce Cyrus to, so we've been a bit busier than normal. We head back to Athens tonight so we can go to work tomorrow.
Happy Father's Day!
-Shirin

My dad drinking in his grandson.

Cyrus and Clayton checking each other out at Durango's Bagels on Saturday morning.

Rich uncle Clayton.

Chapu trying to figure out what that noisy, wiggly creature is.

Rich uncle David.

Unfortunately, my mom had a sore throat this weekend, so she hasn't touched or held Cyrus at all. That made her sad, but it made my dad extra happy to have him all to himself (not that her throat was sore.)

Lisa was in town this weekend too, so we went over to her parents house to visit. Irysse has known me since I was about 5 years old and here she's holding my baby.

For Father's Day morning, my dad cooked us all a big breakfast! That's not fair, but it's how it worked out, for some reason.

Yummy...Persian breakfast, our favorite! My dad opening his Father's Day presents while Gabriel and Cyrus looked on. Gabriel got some presents too, since he's officially able to celebrate Father's Day these days.

Just for fun, we put Cyrus on a quilt Mamaw (G's grandmother) made for my mom and took a bunch of pictures of him.

Cyrus' photoshoot.

Calvin is twice Cyrus' size still.

Baby aerobics

New pictures for my sister

Apparently I am not posting enough Cyrus pictures for my sister's taste and I'm getting scolded. So, I don't have much to say...here are some pictures from the last week or so that I hadn't posted before.
-Shirin

Walking (aka sleeping in stroller)

Very sleepy baby after the walk

Helping me fold laundry on the bed.

Beth posed the poor baby.

Aunt Beth visiting

A little old Russian lady in a babushka.

So attractive, Beth, thanks!

When Tita was still here to see her nephew as much as she wanted.

He has a very kissable head, face, body, and footsies!

New developments

Some milestones

This weekend we noted some milestones, namely that Gabriel was now 30 and that Cyrus was now a month old. I've been asked if the last 4 weeks with a newborn have flown by or dragged on, and it's a hard question to answer. Honestly, I feel it has been both, somehow. Maybe my days are long b/c I am up every 3 hours around the clock but the weeks fly by? I don't know.
In any case, I'm proud of both my sweethearts for living as long as they have and being great people throughout the process.
Cyrus is following the textbooks as far as his development goes (just like he did during pregnancy). Things that seem small, like maintaining eye contact and following moving objects with his eyes, are just two examples of accomplishments he has displayed during the last week. It's not much in the large scheme of things, but we're happy to see his advancement go from bump on a log to bump on a log with eyes that move around and focus! :) Ha ha. Parents get easily excited so try to understand our happiness over some ocular movement. It's nice to lock eyes with your infant and feel that he's really looking at you and knows it.
-Shirin

For Gabriel's birthday, Cyrus agreed to a little bit of light reading.

Look who came to visit! It's Cailyn, my friends' daughter. I'd never seen her awake before, so it was exciting to see her blue eyes.

Beth and Emily came over too (for G's birthday).

I tried a new cake recipe on them...luckily, it turned out great. It was easy and looked cool, so if anyone wants the recipe, let me know. It truly took about 10 minutes to make.

Denise, Nowell, and Cyrus watching Beth sing "Happy Birthday" all by herself and Gabriel blow out his candles. He made a wish but later he told me he'd already forgotten what he wished for. It obviously wasn't too important!

By the end of the night, he wasn't even using a fork anymore...just shoveling it in with a spatula! :)

We played games with everyone, but afterwards we sat around and chatted for awhile. Here are the two new daddies...probably talking about gaming.

Cyrus in a milk stupor.

Jujitzu training

Cyrus and Jojen becoming buddies. (Don't ask why, but Cyrus loves it if we just put him down in the middle of the floor. He gets very calm).

He also opens his eyes wider than you would think was possible sometimes.

He cracks me up.

This is great progress for Benjen to let Cyrus sit so close to him. I think they will be buddies in no time.

Cuteness all around.

How to spot a sleepy baby

Family resemblance

I know babies change but when I look at Cyrus' face, I see a lot of my dad in it. I don't have any of his baby pictures, but I do have one from when he was a little kid and I think it still shows the resemblance. Check it out.
-Shirin

My hubby is 30!

I never thought I'd be married to a 3o year old. We had a little family celebration today, and we're going to have friends over for game night this weekend. It doesn't matter to men as much, but at least Gabriel had his first child before he was 30 (by 1 month and 4 days).
-Shirin

Lunch at our favorite Thai restaurant ever.

Cyrus was the perfect baby and slept through the whole lunch.

The owner of the restaurant told us today that tomorrow is their last day of being open. She is moving to Japan with her daughter and couldn't get anyone to take over the restaurant. We are devastated...we love this restaurant! G's parents do too...sorry to be the bearer of bad news!

Good bye, Thai of Athens.

We then went to the car mechanic to get our AC fixed. Cyrus got to hear all about Peter Rabbit while we waited.

Then home again to open some presents. Here's my mom's Star Wars card to her favorite son-in-law.


My, what a suspicious look!

Awww...a cube of baby pictures to look at while at work.

Another dubious look...

Yay...another compass watch! :)

The first (and probably only) mother-son interview

This weekend in pictures

I had no idea how tired I looked until I saw this picture. Guess it makes sense when I'm up every 3 hours around the clock. People: call up your mother (or parents) and thank her (or them) for your very survival. Keeping a newborn alive and well is no joke!

The hairy hand belongs to Cyrus' daddy.

The three Modaresi ladies hadn't been grocery shopping together in a long time...so, we took a couple of pictures of ourselves. None of them were turning out right, so we got pretty silly about it.

We went grocery shopping for ingredients for the awesome Persian dinner my dad was cooking us. My mom is washing a bunch of cilantro and parsley here to help him.

He made some dish that his mom used to cook for him...a curried yogurt stew with rice. It was really good.

After dinner we gathered around the table to play our favorite game, Therapy. I'm not sure why we all like it so much, but it's a great mixture of psychology trivia and knowing the other players well. We usually end up learning some cool facts and laughing at each other a lot.

I can't quite remember what my dad and Gabriel were saying to each other, but it was really funny.

Cyrus wasn't old enough to play, but he looked on from his Bibi joon's lap.

Anahita has learned how to entrance her nephew with her improvised singing.

Cyrus and I spent a few minutes doing "tummy time" today. He still needs a hand (or two) to keep up that big head of his, but we're confident he'll get a very strong neck one day to keep it from bobbling over.

Pardon the naked baby, but we wanted to air out his bum a little bit. His legs and feet aren't really this disproportionately big...it's just a perspective thing.

Gabriel helped Cyrus take a photo from his viewpoint...do yourself a favor and look at the bottom right corner of this picture.

What a lucky boy to have a dad so in love with him.

One of my college roommates, Becca, sent Cyrus this really cool hat (and other clothes). It's fair trade and made with organic cotton. I guess Cyrus is gonna be an environmentally and socially conscious baby from the start (including his non-bleached, biodegradeable diapers...although, I still am considering switching to cloth).