Cyrus and his new buddy

Cyrus has a new buddy named Solan. His mom is a vet student named Kim who I've become friends with in the last year (she started school last fall). They are only 9 days apart, with Solan being born on April 30. Kim and I took them walking today and here's some cute pics of them on the playground. I think I posted some pics of them earlier when we went over to her house for a play date in January.
One thing I like about Solan is that he is a breastfed, vegetarian baby, just like Cyrus (although I'm doing a lot less breastfeeding these days, unfortunately). He's also a very big, healthy boy and hopefully they will both be in Athens long enough to become friends as kids. It's nice to have a vegetarian buddy your own age! :)
-Shirin

Kim and Solan swinging.

Dirt + Cyrus = Happy

It was a beautiful day at a beautiful park.

OK, time for a photo shoot, boys.

What cutsies.

Awww...

Perfect: two smiley little babies.

Ack...stop putting mulch in your mouth!

Whee!

This is what I did with Cyrus too, you just can't see me cuz I'm behind the camera (he didn't go down by himself).

Time for the swings. I didn't know how Cyrus would do, but he liked it a lot.

Solan liked it too.

Two babies, dangling from swings.

The walking man

There are moments when all Cyrus seems to want to do is walk around the house. It's like his new skill is just such an exciting part of his life now. The next two videos are of him just tooling around the house using his two feet.






Here, though, are two videos where I could barely get Cyrus to walk at all. It seemed that being outside just froze his feet to the cement a little bit. Oh, well, I guess that's better than him running in front of cars or something.





And here is evidence that the little boy does actually sit still now and then...almost never, but it can happen.

A fun weekend

Since I had a few days off and I didn't have any tests to study for, I was able to do so many fun things. Friday night, I went out with friends downtown; Saturday, I went for a run, played with Cyrus, and went to a play with Gabriel; and Sunday, I went grocery shopping with Cyrus and had friends over for games and baby play-time. What a different life than before. Granted, I am gone much longer on the days that I am working, but I do get some days off and I get all my free time to myself. How amazing!
-Shirin

The Morton Theater, in downtown Athens, is in an historic building built in the early 1900s, I think. It was also one of the first black-owned theaters in this country, so it has much significance. Anyway, we went there to see the play, Macbeth, put on by a company called "The Rose of Athens." Some of the actors were locals, but several were professional actors (one was even trained as a Shakespearean actress), and one was a Hollywood actress (most famous for playing the mother of the "ugly baby" in Seinfeld). Gabriel and I really enjoyed the experience of going to a play, since the last time we went was probably about 3 and 1/2 years ago.

Yesterday, Denise and Nowell came over with Cailyn for games and snacks. We played Settlers of Catan, one of our favorite games. It was a little disjointed because we were taking care of two squirmy babies at the same time, but it worked well enough.

Cyrus sat in his high chair for about the first 30 minutes and fed himself his dinner (wheat bread, hummus, avocado, and banana). He also really enjoyed watching Cailyn on her mommy's lap.

What a cutie! It's so amazing to see these guys together and to realize how big they have gotten. Cyrus is walking, Cailyn is saying several words and mimicking her parents really well, and they both have hair on their heads (Cailyn's is getting curly!). And, Denise and I have both made it to clinics with a baby, something that seemed rather impossible before we actually started doing the motherhood and school thing at the same time.

Cailyn LOVES to stick out her tongue. She's been doing it since she was born. :)

She also liked our piano. It's been the hit of the weekend.

Silly baby videos

These are two videos of Cyrus being silly while I'm trying to feed him. For example, in the bread/hummus video, he's just been feeding it to himself, but once the camera was on, he just started to smash it. The spinach episode needs no explanation...he's just being silly.
-Shirin

The piano!

Fortuitously, a girl at my school was looking to sell a piano for cheap, and I was able to convince Gabriel that it was a necessity for our home. He was an easy sell, since he wasn't really opposed to having a piano, just that I am always worried about clutter in the house, and we bought it last week. However, it's one thing to pay for a piano and a whole other thing to actually move it. Luckily, the girl's house was only a few miles away from ours, so this morning, Bren, Gabriel, Cyrus, and I went over there to get it in Bren's truck. We were able to lift it into the truck fairly easily and then Gabriel and Brendan carried the darn thing from the parking lot to our house. I sure hope they didn't do any damage to their vertebral discs.
So, we have a piano now! I'm so excited about it. I just got online and downloaded a bunch of music to start playing. We do need to get it tuned, but it's a nice piano and plays well. I'm so happy it worked out.
-Shirin

Securing the piano into Bren's truck bed.

Cyrus quietly looking on.

Getting ready for the cold, wet ride home.

I was nervous the whole way home, following the boys like this. But, Brendan drove very carefully and Gabriel kept the piano from falling over in Brendan's truck bed, and everything went smoothly.

The hardest part was carrying it from the car to the house. Luckily, there are two strong boys in my house to do the job.

Gabriel trying out the ivory.

Now it's Bren's turn.

Now my turn.

Now it's Cyrus' turn.

Cyrus in the morning

Since my work schedule this block has been 9 AM-7 PM and since I've had to drive 1 hr each way, I've been gone from home a lot this week. So, I basically only see Cyrus in the mornings. Luckily, he's a lot of fun in the mornings and very happy to see me, so we make the most of our time together. I posted a few videos from this morning. I noticed that I move around a lot while shooting the video (b/c Cyrus is moving) and it's a bit bumpy. Sorry about that; I'll try to do better from now on.
Also, if you would like to see several videos on my mom's blog from this weekend at my parent's house (mostly of Cyrus as well), please click here and here.
-Shirin

Happy Norooz!

It's Persian New Year on the first day of spring, so Gabriel, Cyrus, and I headed to Rock Hill to celebrate together. I need to go to bed, so I'll just post some pictures of our nice trip.
-Shirin

Cyrus loves the keyboard and mouse on computers. We don't let him touch ours, but grandpas are more acquiescent than parents, apparently.

He really jacked up my dad's computer.

This was the kind of weekend we had...Cyrus wakes us up so early every morning, the person who gets up with him always needs a nap later in the day.

Who's in my laundry basket?

It's Cyrus!

Pushing it around like a shopping cart.

Examining flowers with Grammy.

He mostly just wanted to put them in his mouth.

Fun outside together!

Walking around with my sweetheart.

My dad took a turn too, since it was such a pretty day.

Done with my first rotation

I know I've been posting less lately, but it's because I'm not near a computer as often now that I'm working with real animals instead of sitting in a classroom all day and on a computer studying all night. So...sorry about that, but I have been enjoying my life a lot lately. I LOVE working in the hospital and I loved my first rotation in exotics. We had a blast with the animals and working at zoos a few times. I can't post many pics of things I did, but my latest patients were a duck, a ferret, and an alligator. Very fun stuff.
-Shirin

We examined one of the goats at the petting zoo at Zoo Atlanta. There were a bunch of goats, sheep, and pigs at the petting zoo where we were.

We didn't do anything but look at this guy, but he's so big and cool looking. He's an alligator turtle and he was near the snake that we examined behind-the-scenes.

I loved the gorillas most, but we didn't get to go behind the scenes because none of us were current on our TB tests (within the last year). I guess they are worried about us giving our biological cousins a horrible disease. So...we just watched them play from afar.

These hornbills were incredibly cool and funny birds. We just watched them as well. We did get to do anesthesia, blood-collection, and radiology on some other cool exotics birds, but I wasn't allowed to take pictures.

These two gopher tortoises were our patients earlier in the week from the Athens zoo Bear Hollow, but here they are just hanging out in their pen. They were doing really well.

This alligator was our patient as well. We moved her to a great new location and did a physical exam on her, etc. We also did a gender check and...she's a girl! :)

I am really sad to be done with my exotics rotation, but at the same time I am excited to be done with my first rotation and to have learned so much and enjoyed every second of it. I head to an externship at a small animal practice for the next 3 weeks. More updates soon.

Quick videos from yesterday and today

I don't have time for picture posting right now as it's time for bed. BUT...my Flip is fast and easy, so here are some videos.
-Shirin

Cyrus feeding himself:




Cyrus walking:




One more:

Some videos from this morning

Sadly, I meant to take more pictures this week of Gabriel's parents' visit. Unfortunately, it seemed to slip my mind, since I was only with them for dinner after work and was more focused on the food and family than my camera. They reported having an excellent time with Cyrus and we were so grateful that they came to babysit this whole week while Cyrus' sitter was on Spring Break. We are so lucky to have such dedicated grandparents for our son. They left this morning, so I will have to take more pics of them with Cyrus in April when we see them again for the Ides of March...er, Ides of April.
But, the blog must go on. So, here are a few videos of my sweetheart from this morning. I cherish my weekends now more than ever, since it's really the only long, quality time I have with him.
-Shirin

Cyrus videos for the fans

For all the videos I have of Cyrus walking, I have many of him where I want him to walk, and he won't cooperate. So, here are some of those from last week. I've been lazy about videotaping when I get home these days. Plus, Gabriel's parents are in town, so I've been hanging out with them instead of blogging, whenever I get a chance after work. I'll post some pics of them soon.







This last one was just for fun:

The zoo!

I'm so excited. The doctors and student from my rotation are going to the Atlanta Zoo tomorrow to do work on their animals. Yippeee!!! I'm so excited. We're going to be working on gorillas, elephants, snakes, birds, and tiny little rabbity-things (can't remember the name).

On a separate note, Gabriel and I were walking down the street tonight in our neighborhood (after Cyrus went to bed) and saw a dead possum on the road. I'd already seen it there all day driving past and knew it was dead. Suddenly, I noticed it had tiny little pink babies near it's feet. Oh, how sad, I thought...and then they moved! All three of these little babies were still alive!!! Oh my god! I didn't know what to do and actually considered squishing one under my foot to put it out of it's misery. They had literally been lying on the pavement near their dead mommy all day long, with cars whizzing past. So sad. So, I got them into a cup with a leaf and took them to the hospital. I called in another student and we (along with Gabriel), washed them off, syringe-fed them some puppy milk replacer, gave them some subcutaneous fluids, and put them in an incubator in some blankets. I don't think they'll live, but at least they can die warm and comfortable. How sad.
-Shirin
PS I didn't have my camera with me, but here's a photo of the kind of babies I found. They were really underdeveloped due to their being marsupials.

This weekend.

Since I didn't have to go into the hospital to take care of patients, I got to enjoy my weekend. Here are some pictures from this afternoon at our local "zoo." It's more like a wildlife exhibit with an outdoor path, and it's open 7 days a week and it's free. Because it was lovely weather today, there were dozens of families with their kids walking around as well. Cyrus is still a bit too young to look for the animals in their enclosures, but he enjoyed being outdoors and people-watching.
-Shirin

My favorite boys.

Cyrus not looking at the right stuff.

The black bear was sleeping with his paw in the air.

I don't think Cyrus really saw him, but he seemed interested in the enclosure anyway.

I have to get kisses when I can during the weekend. They aren't guaranteed during the week.

Down at the lake, checking out the geese. I really wished we had brought a picnic lunch with us. It was a lovely day for a picnic and there were lots of tables around the lake to eat at.

Ducks!

Home for a big-boy bath with Daddy.

Brothers working on something together. Bren is still living with us and it's still going great. He's fit right into the household and I'm sure we'll miss his presence here when he moves out this summer.