New Year's resolution

So, after looking at all the holiday pics, I decided that I need to go on a diet. However, I hate not eating a bunch of food (don't we all), so my skinny friend Lisa suggested that I just give up cheese for 1 month and see how much weight I'd lose. I can honestly say that I love cheese almost as much as I love any food (bread beats everything), but I agree with her that it's chock full of fat and not much else that's good for you, except taste.
So, I will accept her challenge: no cheese for 1 month. I've already been tested and it's been hard. Not only is it delicious, but it's also in everything I eat, especially as a vegetarian. But, I am determined. I can no longer live in the fat-suit that is my body!
Farewell, Brie, Cheddar, and Mozzarella. I will miss you dearly.
-Shirin

Christmas in FL

It's been a nice long break here in FL, where we've mostly just been hanging out with la familia Beal. So...here are lots of pictures! :)

-Shirin

PS The order of them got pretty mixed up when I was uploading and I don't have time to rearrange them...so just try to enjoy the helter-skelter nature of them! :)

Outside on the Beal's wonderful screened-in porch, we always sit out there to eat Christmas dinner and play games.


Gabriel showing off my present, the Flip. It looks like a little cell phone or video game handset, to me, but it's really an awesome camcorder!


Santa's little elf with her baby.



Gabriel got one of his favorite games from Bren for x-mas. We've played it almost every night (It's called Settlers of Catan).


Morgan the elf wanted to play Mafia with us.

Casey and Cyrus checking each other out on Christmas morning.


This year, it was Gene's turn to prepare Christmas food, and we got to try all his mom's Italian food dishes. This is a really cool one they called "dot soup." The dots are pasta and the broth is really hot when you serve it so you can melt parmesan cheese over it. Yummy!


We went to St Petersberg for a day to hang out with this pelican...(JK...Janice and Casey and Morgan, for real).


We went to a cool restaurant overlooking the bay (or maybe the gulf?)



Cyrus enjoyed the scenery and the carrots (and his new car seat cover from Grandma Rita).

What a good looking family.

Us too, us too! (Cyrus isn't putting on his best face for the picture).

We watched the sunset go down over the gulf and I realized that I hadn't stopped to do that in years and years (can't even remember when).

Apparently, all babies share a facination of plastic cups, b/c this is Morgan and for a second I thought it was Cyrus, just because of what he was doing to the cup.

Uncle Bren and Cyrus, back home. Cyrus was showing Bren how his new cap should be worn.

We went to a yummy Thai restaurant a few nights ago, which had a really cool chair outside of it. Bren is here trying to help Cyrus enjoy the ride.



Oops, back in Tampa. This is an even better pic of the Turners (notice how much Morgan is loving his cup).


And here's Cyrus loving his carrots.

Oops, back to Christmas morning. I know this one is from Pap Pap b/c it's addressed to "The Cyrus."

Picture time! Nope, just kidding, time to fuss.

Pap pap in heaven. Two babies and a doggie.

Cyrus and Morgan really liked to check each other out this trip.

Vacation videos

We're still too busy for me to have uploaded photos, but I have done a quick upload of some of my videos from the weekend. Just love that Flip!


This one is of Cyrus playing in his new high chair and laughing at his Pap Pap (behind the camera).



Cyrus and Morgan playing on the new Learn n' Groove from Uncle Casey and Aunt Janice. The fussiness is probably because we didn't let him crawl over to me, I think. He's been pretty clingy this holiday vacation...guess it's just a phase.

Merry Christmas

We're here in FL for Christmas proper. It's about 70-something degrees outside during the day and Cyrus is actually getting to wear some clothes I never thought I would be able to put him in, since it's so cold outside in GA. My gift from Gabriel was an awesome new camcorder called the Flip. It's about as big as a cell phone, but will provide much better quality than my digital camera, which I was using to take footage before. I've uploaded two of the videos from today of us just enjoying each other at Gabriel's parent's house. I'll put pictures up soon.
Merry Christmas!
-Shirin

Videos from this week

Christmas is here!

I've been out of town visiting family and friends, so I am backed up on my posts. Here are a few photos of what Cyrus has been doing during Christmas Break.
-Shirin

We took some x-mas pics of him dressed like a reindeer (courtesy of his Aunt Lisa). We got some nice pics out of it, but I actually liked the ones where he didn't look so great even better! Here is a series of the "throw-aways."

We opened stockings early at my parent's house and Cyrus seemed to like his Cracker Jacks best. You can see more videos of this on my mom's blog.

Then he decided to get naked to really enjoy himself.

Sunday night, I drove down with Cyrus to Columbia, SC to visit with my college friends Sarah and Saskia. This is how Cyrus greeted them. It was understandable, since we had to wake him up from sleeping in the car. Bad first impression!

He was much sweeter the next day after he had gotten enough sleep. We were sitting in a restaurant here, admiring how "motherly" Sarah looked.

We walked around a lot on Monday and it was quite cold, for the south. Luckily, Sarah had knitted Cyrus this hat. It kept him warm in his stroller as we walked.

He got tired of sitting, so his Aunt Saskia agreed to cart him around.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

We expected Sarah's dog Boston and Cyrus to like each other more, but they just weren't that interested.

Cyrus and his aunties sure did like each other though!

We're home right now and about to leave for FL tonight. We checked the mail and look what arrived! A package from great aunt Martha! How exciting!

Cool! His very own cell phone. Boy, they sure do start young these days. (See his first reaction to it on the video above).

Videos for Tita

Since my poor sis is laid up back in Cali with both her feet surgerized on (to fix her painful metatarsals), I uploaded a bunch of Cyrus vids for her to watch. You guys can watch them too, if you feel like it! :) I am posting them as they get uploaded, so there should be a total of 5 when I'm all done.

Quick update from a tired vet student mommy

I plod onward with my studying. Tomorrow (Wednesday), I take my Musculoskeletal exam in the morning and have the afternoon off to study. Sounds reasonable, except that I have two exams the following day, Digestive and Oncology. They are both hard, but Onco has a million lectures to learn (there are a lot of tumors out there). I'll be lucky to even read through each lecture once, let alone actually learn or study the material adequately. No matter what, my semester of hell will finally be over Thursday afternoon. I'm sure I can at least eke out passing grades, right?

As a reward for finally being done, Thursday night we will head home to RH to celebrate an early Christmas with my parents. From there, Gabriel returns to Athens to work on Monday, while Cyrus and I go to Columbia for a 2 day visit with my college girls, Sarah and Saskia. Then, it's back home Tues night to pack and drive down to FL Wednesday, after Gabriel gets off from work. Driving at night seems to be OK with Cyrus, so we hope to get there in around 8 hours, though that is probably wishful thinking. So...we will be arriving around 2 AM or later, Christmas Day. Luckily, once we get there, we can rest and stay in one place for almost a week.

I can't wait for the exams to be over and the friends and family visiting to start. I'm not sure what all this will do to Cyrus' sleep schedule, but it isn't that great right now anyway, so I'm not that worried about screwing it up worse.

Alright, off to bed for some interrupted sleep by my darling sweetheart and then back up to go knock out one more exam.

-Shirin

I think it's good for me to go back to pictures like this to make me remember the good ol' days. Babies that sleep all the time are easy. Don't get me wrong, I love the new standing, crawling, interesting Cyrus...I just sometimes like to look back at the days when he was simple.

Running stroller

Now that Cyrus is such a proficient crawler and a wanna-be walker, his old stroller just won't do. It's the kind that newborns use as car seats that snap out to become part of the stroller (a great asset to keeping sleeping babies happy, in the early days). However, these are modern times and Cyrus is TOTALLY over it...he needs something more sleek, upright, and speedy. So..Craig's List to the rescue--see our semi-new running stroller above. We got it at a good price from a Russian couple that's moving back home with their one year old. I love getting a good deal on something AND reusing objects instead of buying new.

Now I need to go running...

-Shirin

Donde esta Beth?

This weekend and the whole next week I'll be continuing to cram knowledge into my head so that I can pass my many exams and be done with my penultimate semester of vet school. My parents, thankfully, came to help me this weekend with cleaning, cooking, and childcare (the 3 Cs, so to speak). My dad just asked me why he hasn't heard anything about Beth during the last month. Is anyone else wondering that? Perhaps Beth's mom will stop being a devoted reader of my blog if her daughter never makes it into the content anymore.

Well, the answer is simple: we're both busy as hell AND taking different elective classes this semester. Well, some of the same ones, but lots of different ones too. But, she's still doing well, still in vet school, and still my friend. Above, I have posted a file photo of her, just to assure any of my more dubious readers that she's doing just fine (albeit sick as hell of school just like me). In fact, we're getting together tonight to study dentistry.

-Shirin

Videos to tide you over

Busy bees

Sorry for the prolonged absence, but final exams always distract me from everything else in life. Plus, the baby thing...ya know. But, my sister said she is in Cyrus withdrawl, so I am going to try to post a new video of him tonight or tomorrow (takes a while to upload). I gotta go to bed...
-Shirin

Yep...me studying. I have 5 finals and a few quizzes before I'm done. I look so haggard b/c that's how I feel. Exhaustion abounds.

Gabriel has to study too...he's taking a computer science class and the final is tomorrow.

Destruct-o-bot: nothing is safe!

The cats are neither very afraid nor interested in Cyrus thus far, but that certainly doesn't mean they want him padding towards them at break-neck crawling speed either. So...their lives are changing, just like mine and Gabriel's, due to the new mobility of the resident baby (see second video for context).
I am also going to have to empty my lower shelves of all objects soon, something I've been avoiding (see first video for context). But, it's all worth it to have a little mobile baby who can express interest in things around him and learn how to manipulate them with much more dexterity and ease than Gabriel and I expected. Clearly, from his jerky movements now and then, his cerebellum has not finished developing. Still, for only having been pushed out into this world, a helpless, limp ol' baby, less than 7 months ago, I'm quite impressed.
-Shirin

Stuck on me...and then G...and then me again.

So, Cyrus is quite the crawler now, after almost a month of practice. So, he's moving up in the world to start standing every chance he gets. The following videos are good because I think they really tell the distant watcher where he's at these days: 1). loves to crawl, 2). wants to walk, 3). wants to be near his parents almost all the time.
He's totally cool with strangers still, but when we're home as a family, he always wants to be right next to me or Gabriel. The beauty of it for Gabriel is that he was worried that Cyrus would develop a liking for only me (since I'm the mommy and giver of food), but so far he seems to prefer both of us fairly equally. My theory is that G is so involved in his life and childcare, unlike most dads (and I'm not always there with him, like some moms) that daddy gets equal footing as mommy in Cyrus' eyes. How sweet.

The rest of the Thanksgiving photos

The end of our adventure game ended with us having to make fire with a flint and then running to the top of the hill to place our team's stake. Nicole's team and David's team were neck and neck for 4th place and both seemed to realize they made fire at about the same time...

A race ensued (see Nicole chasing them up the hill) and David's team just beat out Nicole's by a few seconds. Darn...I always hope the women win!

Meanwhile, the boys who had already finished the race, Brendan, David, Clayton, and Gabriel, decided to try to make fire from scratch (no flint or man-made materials, except for string).

Sam tried to help them, I think, but as far as I can tell, they never actually got past getting it to smoke. That's actually a pretty good accomplishment by itself; if you've ever tried to make fire on your own, you know it's hard even when you have a piece of flint!

Then it was indoors for a massive Scrabble tournament. We had an intermediate and advanced table, although I think many of the players were really good at both tables. Sam, Nicole, Ashley, and Mamaw play Scrabble like nobody's business, so they are always the teams to beat.

Gabriel and I got lucky and won at the last minute by using all our letters to form the word "ivy." Fun stuff.

The next day, we played kickball. Here is Clayton after hurting his knee during the game. I'm really hoping his ACL isn't torn. Clayton, how's it feeling? Go to the doctor!

Like good family and friends, we all stood around gawking at him. :)