Happy morning baby

The hotel had really good natural lighting, so I took some videos of Cyrus' shenanigans.

Just a few cute pics from yesterday

We weren't sure we would be spending the night in Duluth before we got there on Saturday, but luckily I had brought along Cyrus' "Moses basket." I got it from my sister-in-law, and it's basically a portable bed. He looked so comfy in there.

I figure a baby can only be put to sleep in a basket as long as he can't climb out of it. Since Cyrus is almost to that point, he probably will be donating his basket to his younger cousin, Morgan, soon. I'll probably bring it to Thanksgiving for the baby boys to use together.

Cyrus is in love with his feet now. I took this picture yesterday while holding him...he didn't want to put his foot down even after I had picked him up.

Turning over to see me and the camera.

Sucking on that foot.

"Yeah, that's right. I love my foot."

More grandparents; more fun

My parents last weekend, Gabriel's parents this weekend...what did we do to deserve so many visitors? We had a baby, of course! I've never seen 4 grandparents so devoted and obsessed with their little grandson.
G's parents arrived on Thursday night and plan to leave early Sunday morning. They were able to babysit him for us on Friday while Gabriel worked and I was in school. It was funny. I got home, and they had had fun but seemed a little bit worn out. Cyrus can be quite a handful sometimes.
Today, we drove down to Duluth, GA (outside of Atlanta) to stay with G's parents in their hotel room (they couldn't get a hotel room in Athens tonight b/c of UGA's football game today). The biggest concern we had was whether we'd be able to get gas, since almost all the gas stations are out right now. It's created a slight bit of panic around here. We were able to find some on the way down...hopefully it will last us until we can find more gas again in a few days.
We're in the hotel room right now watching the UGA and Alabama football...unfortunately, UGA is getting kill right now at half-time. We didn't expect that!
Enjoy the cute Cyrus pics.
-Shirin

Yay! Pap pap is here to play!

We tried out a new Thai restaurant on Thursday night. Cyrus always seems so interested in food, but I think it's just b/c he likes to look at anything that moves. Technically, he's at an age where we could start him on rice cereal, but I'm going to try to wait til he's 6 months before introducing solid foods, b/c starting earlier is associated with more incidence of diabetes and obesity.

He's still pretty good in restaurants, but he's no longer just sleeping through every dinner we go to. Now, he's an active participant in the meal (not through eating, but by grabbing at everything within reach).

On Friday afternoon, Gene and I went to Target to get Cyrus a new crib. His other one was recalled due to some defect that had been reported (we never had any problems with it). I don't have any pics of it, but G and I built the new crib on Friday night, and it's really beautiful.

It was stupid, but I bought this little pumpkin hat for Cyrus while I was at Target (it was an impulse buy). It ended up being too small for him, so I had to cut the seam a little. It's still cute.

This morning, we arrived in my in-law's hotel room for more playtime.

We ended up at Baby's R Us to look at new car seats later this morning. Cyrus has already outgrown his infant seat, much sooner than we expected. So, he got to try out some big-boy chairs.

Cyrus didn't really see why he even needed a chair...he just wants to sit in the regular seat like a big kid.

Tonight, we went to Shogun's (a Japanese steakhouse) for dinner. Cyrus enjoyed all the distractions.

Our chef being very dramatic.

His most favorite part was Gabriel's glass. He sucked and sucked on it and drooled all over Gabriel's lap.

He just loved it.

Working on the surgery skills

Yesterday, we did another surgery. Because it was a major surgery including an exploratory surgery, liver biopsy, ovariohistorectomy, and cystotomy (bladder surgery), it was scheduled to be a terminal lab on piglets. I think I already mentioned before that a few of us students were uncomfortable with the idea of euthanizing healthy, young animals and requested an alternative. Lucky for us, we have very understand teachers and administration, and they were able to acquire a previously euthanized dog to work on instead.
Emotionally, as you can imagine, it's still sad to know that this dog was alive earlier that day and had been euthanized, but logically it made us feel a lot better knowing she wasn't killed for us. She was going to have to be euthanized anyway (she was quarantined at the animal control and had to be euthanized after a certain time period).
Although our other classmates got to do all those procedures on live animals (which allowed them to work realistically with hemostasis--control of bleeding during surgery), we still felt that our experience was incredibly educational and that we really didn't miss out on that much. We scrubbed in and maintained sterility like normal, and we performed all the same procedures as our classmates. Plus (and this is a big plus), we got to do it all on a dog, which will be our most likely patient, instead of a pig, whose anatomy is quite different.
It was a long day...I was gone 12 hours in all (the longest I've ever been away from Cyrus since he was born, I think), but it was rewarding to learn a lot while staying true to my principles. On a side note, we did miss out on the anesthesia experience by doing the alternative. No one ever thinks about it, but these surgery labs also contribute to our knowledge of anesthetizing our patients and maintaining them on anesthesic gas. To make up for that, we will be required to do an extra week of anesthesia rotation during our senior year. It's not my favorite subject, but it was definitely worth it.
We had a sophomore student observing and she took the pictures below.
-Shirin
PS. This was the one and only terminal lab we had scheduled for this semester, so the rest of our procedures will be survival surgeries, like last week. Next week we do a cat spay, and the week after we do a dog spay (the animals are woken up and returned to the shelter to get adopted). Yippee!!! After that we also have an equine cadaver leg surgery and a bandaging lab.

From left to right: Lisa, Beth, and me. Tammy and Lisa switched lab groups for just this week so Lisa could participate in the alternative.

Lisa, the main surgeon this week, made an incision from xyphoid to pubis. Since we had to examine everything from the diaphragm to bladder, the incision had to be very long.

Opening the abdomen. All that white stuff inside the skin is subcutaneous fat. You'd be surpised how thick the layer of fat is, even on a fairly trim dog. God knows how surgeons get through all of it on heavy humans!

Me exteriorizing the uterus, I think. It was pretty big, like she'd just been in heat.

A teacher giving us a 1 minute tutorial on doing an exploratory.

Fall is here!!!

I'm done with tests and surgery for the week and the air is crisp and cool. It's finally Autumn!!! It gives me so much energy, despite the fact that I was up every 2 hours last night feeding a hungry baby (not typical at all). I'm off to go walking!
-Shirin

OK, so I lied

OK, I'm posting two videos for my sister before I'm done with this darn studying afterall. I just don't want to think about one more horse tooth eruption time or any more pig poop for a while. These videos are from my parents' latest visit.

Out of comission

I'm too busy to blog cuz I have diarrhea on the brain...that's right, my large animal digestive diseases class is all about diarrhea. You would never believe all the causes of it: bacterial, viral, parasitic, toxic, developmental, etc, in neonatal piglets, neonatal calves, adult pigs, cattle, horses, goats, and sheep. It's gonna keep me busy til Wednesday morning, when I take the darn test, and then Wednesday afternoon I'll be busily doing my exploratory surgery, liver biopsy, and spay on a cadaver dog.
Whew...you'll hear from me again on Thursday or Friday when I've recovered.
If you are in Cyrus video withdrawl, go watch some of the old ones.
Crappily yours,
-Shirin

Relaxed weekend

Although I do have a test and some surgery next week, I have had a more relaxed weekend than one would expect with those assignments looming ahead. On Friday night, Gabriel and I played a game and then, Saturday morning, we went yard sale-ing.
My parents came to visit this weekend, arriving on Saturday morning; they have been welcome guests, as usual. They've been helping me cook and clean and, of course, baby sit. I have to get back to reality and start studying soon, but it's been a nice break from such stressful weekdays.
-Shirin

A dejected Gabriel...guess why?

That's right...I WON TRIVIAL PURSUIT! That never happens, and I just snuck by him at the end. Yee ha!

After yard sale-in' on Saturday morning, we ended up at J & J's flea market, right outside of Athens. It claims to be the largest flea market in GA. I'm not sure if that's really the case, but it seems likely, b/c it was pretty huge. We didn't get much stuff, but it was really fun to look at everything, even though there was a fair share of crap being sold.

I was relieved not to see too many puppies for sale. People who make their living by continuously breeding dogs really make me sick. I tried to find some kids' DVDs in Spanish for Cyrus, but they only had adult stuff. There were so many Latinos there, I was surprised not to find something, but I'll keep looking.

Since the flea market was on the way from the highway to our house, my parents stopped by to meet us there. I think they were really just wanting to see Cyrus.

Finally, they could get their Cyrus-fix.

Cyrus' new-found love of grabbing faces manifested itself to an even greater degree when he spied my dad's beard. (His all camo outfit is courtesy of Pap Pap--G's dad). ;)

"Gimme that beard!"

No matter how much it hurt, my dad wouldn't pull away.

Of course, my mom made us a delicious dinner. Here she is washing and chopping the kale. It's such a huge volume when it's raw, but it cooks down quite a lot once it's in the pot.

Meanwhile, Baba joon's beard and mustache were the toy-of-the-hour once again.

So much fun!

This reminds me of when I was a kid.

More videos for the fan club

A healthy 4-month old

Cyrus went to the doctor for his vaccines on Monday. He had such a bad time with it as a 2-month old that we were dreading the visit a little. We actually like his pediatrician a lot and enjoy her checking him out, but he really hated the oral Rotavirus vaccine and was sore from his shots later that night. It was a little rough. Luckily, this visit was nothing like the last. He swallowed the oral one just fine and did cry a bit during the shots but was totally fine right afterwards and at home that night.
So, (drum roll...please) the percentiles are in! Cyrus is still 99th in weight but has moved up in height (97th) and decreased in head circumference (75th). As Gabriel said, he's no Turner (in reference to his brother Casey's big 'ol head).
-Shirin

New trick

We're surgeons!

Well, we're surgeons in the mildest sense of the word. I mean, we did do a dog neuter today, so I guess that counts; however, we still have a long way to go. Nevertheless, it was exciting and fun.
Below is a run down of all the steps we take to learn surgery and take care of our patient.
-Shirin

This is where we set up everything for the day of surgery. We did this last night, since our surgery day is Tuesday.

Tammy was the anesthetist this lab, so she was doing all the drug calculations last night. (Beth was the main surgeon and I was the assistant surgeon--we all rotate in the three positions throughout surgery lab).

After we thoroughly palpated, poked, and prodded our doggie to assess his health and possible problems, we had to write up our records in the computer. It took us a long time!! (We were there a total of 3 hours and at least 1/2 was all the record-keeping stuff. Yuk).

This is Rocket. He is a shelter dog and needs his testicles removed to get adopted more quickly. He is a bit wild but very nice. He's a pointer mix. I chose him b/c of his black head.

Beth, Tammy, and me before surgery this afternoon. You can't tell, but we're smiling.

After inducing, intubating, and prepping our patient, we started the neuter. Beth started off by exteriorizing one testicle and tying it off (before she cut it).

As the assistant, I helped her by dabbing away blood with a 4 x 4 (gauze).

Tying off the testicle.

Now it was my turn. I did the other testicle the way Beth did. It wasn't hard at all, actually.

It was funny how suturing came back to me after all this time. Being in surgery also reminded me of being pregnant, since last time I was in there I was quite pregnant with Cyrus.

Now Beth is back on duty to suture up Rocket's skin.

Yay! The best part of this is that we got to wake Rocket up. Yay! Tammy is still on anesthetist duty--here she is counting his heart rate.

Rocket all wrapped up in towels and heating pads to help him wake up comfy.

Roll, baby, roll

He's done it for a while, but I thought ya'll might like to see. Ignore the fussing at the beginning. He does that whenever we're not being entertaining enough, which is very often.

Happy farms can exist after all

As part of a welfare club trip, I went and toured a "happy" farm with the other club officers this morning. It was a beautiful, sunny day with a cool breeze, and we really enjoyed seeing all the happy animals being raised the way they used to be in the good ol' days. There is little need for medicine or dewormers in these animals, due to the fact that their husbandry and conditions are so well-managed.
We plan to take a field trip there later in the year and try to bring some other vet students to see how things could be done. Less industrialization and less mass-production lead to much happier, healthier animals. The farmers (a married couple) are still relatively new to farming, but they are selling as much as they produce (with waiting lists), so hopefully they will be successful and more farmers will see the beauty in the way they do things.
Enjoy the beautiful, free-ranging, happy animal pictures below.
-Shirin

Some happy pigs greeted us as we drove in.

So did their neighbors, the sheep.

The other club officers listening to the pig details.

Turkeys! It was amazing; every time we came up to a new area of animals, they all came running towards us in excitement. It was really cute.

The turkeys from the other side.

Penny, the pet chicken. She is sort of puny and doesn't lay eggs much, but she's really friendly so she gets to stick around and enjoy life.

Where the chickens lay their eggs and roost at night (an old cotton trailer, I think).

Moving the cattle to their new field for the day and placing their shade truck there.

The piglet neighbors came running to see us too.

Checking out the piglets. The chickens followed us.

Their cattle were beautiful.

They LOVED the new grass. The farmers practice rotational grazing so the cows are never in the same place in two consecutive days. This allows them to prevent parasite transfer, as well as to keep their grass growing tall. The tall grass (their favorite food) eventually overtakes the weeds they won't eat and keeps growing for them to eat the next time around. Ergo--> sustainable!!

These little 4 1/2 week old chickens are also moved to a new grass patch each day.

They are still kept in their little huts, because they are quite little and vulnerable at this age.

Figuring out how to do stuff

Practice makes perfect...he's getting better.

Weekend

I wait all week for the weekend (like most people, probably). I have such grand ideas of all the things I will do, if only the weekend would come. Unfortunately, it ends up there aren't enough hours in a weekend day, just as there aren't enough during the week. I guess I just have too much to do. I have to study for two tests next week, which will already basically take up my whole weekend, since I'm not able to do too much studying during the week. Also, since my surgery labs start next week as well, I will have to do some preparation for that. It's my first dog neuter...yippee!!! I'm really excited about it. The best part is that the dog gets to wake up and go back to the shelter to get adopted, so there will be no guilt or ethical compromises involved in my learning this time. However, since it really matters that this dog doesn't get his urethra nicked while I try to remove his testicles, I really need to review my anatomy and surgical procedures. We are also responsible for his care before and after the surgery, so that's time consuming as well.
Despite all the responsibilities I've listed above, I had a hard time starting my studying last night and today. I do like to take off a day from school-stuff, if I can, but I really shouldn't have this weekend. Oh well. I did all the laundry, vacuumed, and cleaned up our bedroom. I know that doesn't sound like fun, but it definitely makes me happier. Oh yeah, and I played with the boys too, which is always the best. OK, back to studying (Mom, I promise I'll write about my classes soon, so you'll know what I'm studying about).
-Shirin

Friday night at a little Japanese/Korean place downtown. They don't have too many vegetarian options for us, but they are willing to switch out the meat for tofu, so we make it work. I got the Bi Bim Bop (a Korean specialty) and Gabriel got the Teryaki Tofu. Yum!

Then, we walked around the city a little bit. Little bubsy was too sleepy to enjoy it.

This is often how I try to study. I don't think it works too well, but it's definitely better than nothing, and it gives Gabriel a break as sole childcare provider while I study or clean. It also lets Cyrus learn how to play on his own a little bit (he's happier when we're close by, though).

This is probably the more accurate picture (me looking at him instead of the book).

Cyrus vs. cookie bag

The bag of cookies and the baby enter the ring.

Early on, the baby's arm gets inserted into the bag.

Sometimes, a fist gets in the way.

There is much crinkling and crackling.

There is some bag-on-face time too.

The baby tries with all his might to suck on the bag (and succeeds).

They start to tire out.

The match is a draw.

My least favorite class

I am the kind of girl that likes almost all classes I take. I have a few hated classes in my history, especially Honors Physics I and II. But, mostly, I have liked or at least had marginal interest in most the classes I've taken. I seem to have inherited a love of learning from my parents (especially my dad, I think).
This semester, my least favorite class is Radiology lecture. I specifically say "lecture," because I've realized that I actually like Radiology lab. It's much easier to sit with Beth discussing what we think we see on the film in our own time. But, in lecture, I just sit and listen in total confusion for 50 minutes straight. I mean, we have terminology in there that is just crazy (for example, "flexed plantaroproximal-plantarodistal tarsus" is one of the views we take when examining the equine leg--yikes!).
I know it's an important subject to learn, because radiographs are SO integral in diagnosing a myriad of medical problems, but it's been painful trying to learn it. Beth is naturally much better at it than I am, so hopefully she'll have it in her heart to teach me as we go along.
-Shirin

Yesterday in lab.

We had to look through our Radiology textbook just to be able to see what "normal" radiologic anatomy looked like so we could figure out what was wrong with the rads we were evaluating on the view box (not that I still could tell what was wrong, even after seeing normal first). It's a steep learning curve.

Jumping like a madman

These two videos are very similar. One is a more crazy version of the other, but they both clearly demonstrate how much he loves his Jumperoo. Thank you, Grandma, for buying it for him and thank you, Sarah and Deena, for helping me put it together. He can do this for 30 minutes straight, at least.

Babysitting and such

Since we know a few couples that just had babies when we did, we've decided the best plan is to swap babysitting. It's free whenever we need a babysitter and it's relatively painless to add another baby to our own lives for a few hours. In that spirit, we babysat Cailyn on Saturday night so Denise and Nowell could have a few hours in ATL to go to a comedy show they had bought tickets to long ago. Luckily, Cailyn is a very well-behaved lady and gave us no trouble at all (unlike our own boisterous child who demanded entertainment almost every second she was there!) :).
The rest of the photos are just us around the house doing stuff (exciting, I know).
-Shirin

Gabriel talking to Cailyn. We decided that he was responsible for her, and I was responsible for Cyrus all night.

He must've been doing something funny.

I really do hope we have a little girl next. Not that little boys aren't the greatest, but girls are so cute and sweet.

Meanwhile, my darling bubsy looked on (actually, he didn't demand constant attention, as this picture attests to).

He was very interested in what I was doing.

He's never seen me make a bottle like this before.

It's hard to pour powder into liquid when a little hand gets in the way.

Yesterday, Cyrus and I were having a chat/giggle-fest and Gabriel asked me where the camera was. For once, I thought he was going to take a picture of me and Cyrus on his own. But, what did he photograph instead? See below. Of course, I think the cats are marvelous too, but I was just a little insulted. Guess I need to take myself a little less seriously (since I'm clearly not as picture-worthy as a cat chasing a fly!)

Since he could tell my feelings were hurt, he tried to make it up by taking our picture, but it was too late. I wasn't in the mood (Cyrus didn't get the memo that anything was wrong, though).

He was feeling just great.

It's hard to be upset when you have little chubby dough hands on your face.

Today, a favorite professor of mine gave me a gift for Cyrus...a pop-up book.

Gabriel read it to him and he seemed to enjoy it for at least a little while. His attention span isn't quite long enough for a whole book yet though.

Onward the grabber plows.

Balancing life

We've all heard that babies are very time-consuming, which is true. I've also heard, though, that you can just fit babies into your life, which is also true (in my experience so far). I'm not sure how single parents do it, but at least for me and Gabriel, we have gotten into a good pattern of tag-teaming the extra responsibilities to allow each other to have at least a semblance of the life we had BC (before Cyrus). Most of the time, I use my free time to study, cook, and clean (and write blogs). Since I had two quizzes and a test last week and have two tests next week, I have been needing Gabriel to help out a lot these days (I actually should be studying now). Luckily, he's a naturally wonderful father. See pictures below.
-Shirin

Thursday night I went to a coffeehouse to study for my Friday morning Pathology test. When I called Gabriel before I came home, I could hear Cyrus fussing. By the time I got home, though, he was fast asleep in Gabriel's arms (he had been listening to G talking on the phone).

Later that night, we all hung out together in our bed and talked. Cyrus mostly just listened.

I think he might become a thumb sucker.

Cyrus has been really good at sitting up for some time with a little bit of help from behind. He seems to really like being upright.

Sometimes, though, there's just nothing better than a big hand to suck on.

Talking to his mommy before bedtime about all the things he learned that day.

Tante Saskia is back from France and on the phone! Grab it, grab it!

I think Cyrus is finally able to sit up without help (this picture was taken today). He's still wobbly, but he can now keep himself up on his own for short amounts of time.

"What? I can sit up on my own now?"

"They're mine...all mine!"

Oops! There goes the end of sitting up!

Last night

Well, school if finally in full swing. We had our first [scheduled] quiz today (yesterday we had a pop quiz and I'd rather not discuss the results). This afternoon's quiz was in our systemic pathology class on the topic of respiration. Previously, I probably thought like most of you might about the respiratory tract: two lungs and you use them to breathe, right? WRONG!!! Start with your nostrils, move into your nasal cavity, you could go up to the sinuses (different numbers of them in different species of animals) or you could go down to the pharynx (the common area where the oral and nasal cavities connect), then you get to the larynx and trachea, which conduct air down to the bronchi, then bronchioles, and then the alveoli where actual gas exchange occurs. Are you tired yet? That's just the first 2 minutes of the first class! Pathology is the study of diseases, so there are a million trillion ways for things to go wrong in all those places.
So, luckily, the quiz today was sort of a practice session, since it was set up that if we didn't do well on it we could take the exam on Friday (if we did really well, we didn't have to take it). Although I didn't really think I'd do well enough today to exempt the test on Friday, I decided to study as hard as I could just in case I could get lucky. Beth and I studied at her house last night, since it was a quiet place without anyone there. She made dinner and had it waiting for me when I got there...yum! I can hardly believe we've made it through two years of vet school together and are starting our third. There have only been a few tests where we didn't study together either, so we really have helped each other get through.
OK, time for bed. Cyrus has started waking me up twice a night instead of once (darn it!), so I need all the sleep I can get.
-Shirin

A blurry picture of my dinner at Beth's house. Indian food on rice with eggplant dip (some of the rice is "tadeeg" or Persian crunchy rice. She learned to make it from her old roommate who was half Persian).

Salad with cherry tomatoes she grew in her garden.

What we were studying! Wish I knew what was wrong with these lungs. If I did, I probably wouldn't be taking the test on Friday!

Lots of new noises and emotions

For any of you that also check my mom's blog, some of this might be a bit repetitious but cute nonetheless.

Labor Day at home

We went to Rock Hill for the 3-day weekend. I feel the need to get out of town now and then, but it's hard to make it any farther than a few hours away, so my lucky parents get us any time we feel brave enough to pack up our house and take a trip! It was meant to be a weekend full of studying for me, but it didn't really happen. Darn. My first exam is this week coming up...time to cram like crazy, I guess. Not sure how that's gonna work.
Oh well, it was fun, and I'm glad we went. Cyrus also seemed a little more grown up this weekend, for some reason. He started "talking" more (ie using his voice to make more gurgles and noises), grabbing objects with much more purpose, and laughing more at appropriate times. The videos will be posted above of some of these behaviors.
-Shirin
PS Oh yeah, and Cyrus rolled over for the first time this weekend. He only did it once, but it signaled crazier times ahead.

Obi didn't appreciate the newest pet in the Modaresi household. Too much noise and interruptions of dinner.

It was cool to compare Cyrus' prowess of pushing buttons and manipulating Elmo's head compared to 3 weeks ago when he first tried it. He's made great progress in that time.

True to our word, Gabriel and I took my parents out for dinner as a reward for beating us at the Fitness Challenge. Unfortunately, they chose to eat at Cici's pizza to save us money. I actually tried to force Thai food on them instead, but the restaurant was closed so we ended up at Cici's afterall. Oh well, junk food is fun once in a while.

This is when I was trying to study...someone kept stealing my highlighter.

While I studied (for a little while), Gabriel worked on his computer science homework (he was envisioning a matrix or something), and my mom did our laundry (yes, I know I'm in my late 20's...I'm still not too proud to say "yes" to free laundry-doing).

My mom had a little sleepy companion while she folded our clothes.

Life is now all about entertaining Cyrus. At least he really smiles and laughs, so it's a rewarding activity.

Ha ha...Bibi joon is funny!

Bibi joon thinks baby Cyrus is funny too.

Perched atop the highest seat in the house. Cyrus doesn't seem happy b/c he was hungry and waiting for me to feed him (normally he likes that game a lot).

I always feel bad for anyone trying to distract Cyrus when he's hungry. I try to respond ASAP when he's ready to eat, but sometimes I'm in the middle of something and can't start feeding him as fast as he would like...boy, whoever's trying to comfort him sure does get it!