First full day back to work

Today I went back to my full days at work. I still only am scheduled 2.5 days a week, but that means I am at work 8-6 on Mondays and Tuesdays. Today was also a day that my boss was out of town, so it was just me (aka Dr Mo) all day long. It was one of those days that nothing routine came in. Nothing was just straight forward. I had to euthanize two pets, do x-rays, anesthetize a dog and suture lacerations on its eyelid, aspirate a mass and diagnose it microscopically, and take blood to diagnose several dogs with potential endocrine diseases. It's still a little amazing to me that I just walk into the clinic and start telling my staff what to do (in a nice way). But, I really do know what to do, most of the time. When I'm unsure, I can usually look it up, and in some rare cases, I even tell the owner that I'm just not sure and will have to research it or get a second opinion from my boss. I really like the people I work with too, because they are conscientious and nice. And, they call me Dr Mo, which I think it kinda cute.

Kai did OK at Tamala's, I guess. I don't know a lot about it, since Gabriel dropped him off and picked him up today. He seemed very happy and fine tonight, though. I sure did miss his smell and little chubby body in my arms all day, but I also enjoyed working, using my brain, and being very involved in my career. I really am doing it. How exciting it all is.

-Shirin

Farewell to good friends

Our friends, Denise and Nowell, recently moved to Orlando for a really good job opportunity for Nowell. We miss them. We met them shortly after vet school started. Denise was my classmate and we were both married to gaming, smart computer guys. We knew it was a good match. Then, we both decided to have a baby and had them 3 days apart from each other. Our little ones, Cailyn and Cyrus, both went to the same home daycare for the last 2 years and were really good buddies. We also swapped babysitting occasionally and always knew our kids were happy and well cared-for at each other's houses. It's quite a loss that they left.
Luckily, we are still in touch with them and hope to visit whenever we are in FL for Christmas. They aren't very far from where Gabriel's parents live, so hopefully Cyrus and Cailyn will get to play again soon.
-Shirin

Cailyn and Cyrus playing piano together.

Such good buddies.

Nowell and Cailyn playing a piano and drum duet.

Denise meeting little Kai before they left town.

Yesterday, we all met on Skype so Cailyn and Cyrus could chat. It was so good to "see" them and talk to Cailyn. The kids definitely still remembered each other.

The biggest loser (a confession)

Are you all familiar with the show The Biggest Loser? It refers to losing the most weight, so being a loser in that case is good. In my case, I'm the biggest loser because I opted out of my and Gabriel's weight-loss competition. I actually just gave him part of the prize we were competing for and he agreed to let me off of the hook.

I'm disappointed in myself, but I quickly realized that I have no ability to diet right now. I am SO ravenously hungry every day that despite keeping track of my calories, I was eating about 1000 too many calories every day and had no ability to control myself. Don't get me wrong; I'm eating very healthfully, for the most part. But, I am eating at least 3000 calories a day (and not even gaining weight). Breastfeeding is tough on a person's body, and I wasn't able to lose my pregnancy weight with Cyrus until after he was weaned.

Don't worry: Gabriel and I are still going to the gym and being more fit. However, I am no longer on a deadline to lose 13 lbs in 3 months, because there's absolutely no way it was going to happen. I don't feel happy with my body yet, but I know I'll get there in my own time.

-Shirin

2 month baby comparison

Since Kai went for his 2 month check-up and vaccines today, I was curious how Cyrus and Kai compared. I sure did hate being compared all the time to my sister as a kid, so I should say that this is just for curiosity's sake, not because one baby is better or worse!At Cyrus' 2 month visit, he was 15 lbs 5 oz and was in the 95th percentile for height and ~75th percentile for head circumference. Today, Kai weighed 17 lbs 9 oz and was in the 90th percentile for height and off the charts for head circumference. Both of them were off the percentile charts for their weight, which means they were >100th percentile, however that is possible. The good news is that Kai is healthy and did well with his vaccines, so all is well in the baby world. Hope the vaccines don't make him feel yucky tomorrow.

-Shirin

Here is a police expert's analysis of what Kai would look like with Cyrus' hair and eyebrows:

-Gabriel

Some Kai videos

My sis requested some Kai videos. Here ya go!

-Shirin

Sitting in the car (in the rain) after I nursed him. He already knows his daddy is funny.



He LOVES to be sung to.



He likes to watch my mouth as I talk and try to do the same things with his own.

A few more pics from the wedding

I still haven't gotten my photos off my camera. Here are a few from Facebook of the lovely wedding we just went to last weekend.

-Shirin

The lovely bride surrounded by her bridesmaids (from left to right): Christy, me, Saskia, Kat, Courtney, Karen, and Deena.

A group photo of all the USC people at the wedding. That's where most of us know each other from and how Sarah met Barney (through his USC friends, because he actually went to Clemson). It was a great reunion for us.

One of the girls at the wedding, Karen, snapped this photo of Kai. He looked so cute in the French outfit Saskia's mom sent me when Cyrus was born. Cute, cute, cute!

Congratulations, Sarah and Barney!

Sarah and Barney were married in a beautiful outdoor ceremony in Swannanowa, NC on August 21, 2010. It was lightly raining with lush greenery and misty mountains all around them. Over 100 friends and family joined them, and we all had a wonderful time celebrating the union of this great couple. They will be honeymooning for 2 weeks in Turkey.

More pictures to follow.

-Shirin

Hitting the road

Wish us luck as we take our first road trip with the new baby. We have a great reason for traveling: Sarah and Barney's wedding in Asheville, NC. The plan is to leave tonight with the two kids and drive to Rock Hill in a reasonable amount of time. I'm anticipating at least 2 stops for breastfeeding, but hopefully no more than that. If Cyrus can be patient during those times, I think we'll be OK. Kai eats really frequently at night, so I hope he can sleep more than normal in the car so we can actually make it to RH before midnight. Thursday, we will leave Cyrus with my parents and head to Asheville with Kai. We are staying in a house on the grounds of the wedding, so we'll have a whole wonderful weekend to spend with some of my closest friends around. Wish us luck!

-Shirin

A love story

The people in this picture are my grandparents, Fred and Liselotte Schumacher. They started their life as pen pals and ended up married for over 50 years, before my grandfather passed away (maybe almost 60 years; I'm not sure). They raised my mom and Aunt Martha in the Chicago suburbs, where my grandma still lives today.

Recently, my aunt found and translated (from German to English) their personal correspondences from 1947. My grandma was living in Vienna, Austria, while my grandpa was living in Chicago, IL. Their mothers were schoolgirl friends in Austria many years before, which led my single, young grandparents to learn about each other and start their correspondence. Thus, they got to know each other and fall in love through letters. I think people still fall in love this way today, but it is called "online dating." In their day, they had to wait countless days for the airmail letters to arrive. What anticipation they clearly felt!
Thanks to the newly translated letters, I have been able to start reading them. Gabriel and I have made it another one of our hobbies to read the letters to each other (I read my grandma's part and he reads my grandpa's). I am not only very interested in their own personal experiences and opinions that come out in these letters, but also to hear what it was like to be living in their cities at that time. My grandma had just lived through WWII, and she had clearly experienced some hardships (eg. the Russians had taken over her family's vacation home on the Danube River!). My grandpa certainly had it better in the US, although he seemed to feel a great fondness for Austria, his mother's homeland, and had even traveled throughout Austria as an American soldier in the war.

We are only about 12 pages into the 52-page set of letters, so we still have a lot to learn, but it has already helped me get to know my grandparents better. After the first letter from my grandpa to my grandma, I broke down in tears, remembering the kind, quiet, silly man that I knew all those years as a child. It's sad that he's gone now...but not forgotten. I also feel a loss that I haven't seen my grandma since I was in college. I miss her, now more than ever, when I read her cultured yet cute way of looking at the world. I can see them both in my mom and in me. What an intriguing and cool way to learn more about my grandparents through the actual letters that lead my grandmother to emigrate to the US to marry my grandpa and have my mom who then had me. And life goes on and on...

-Shirin

Videos

BOOKS!!!

Despite already having quite a few books, Gabriel and I have read all of them exhaustively as per Cyrus' requests all day, every day. While we really love reading to him, we get really bored with the same old books, even good ones. Thus, we put out the call for more books from anyone who had some to spare.

To our good fortune, Brendan's girlfriend Melissa has a little cousin who is a voracious reader and several years older than Cyrus. Today was like Christmas for the Modaresi-Beals when Brendan came over with two whole boxes full of new (used) books for Cyrus. This is not only going to be wonderful for Cyrus, but also for his poor parents that need some new material.

Thank you, Melissa and Brendan!

-Shirin

Boxes of books from Brendan (alliteration, anyone?)

Cyrus bringing over a dinosaur book and getting a kiss from his tio.

"Read this, Mommy."

MDs vs Veterinarians

Sad and funny at the same time.

Lifelong learners

Most of you probably already know that Gabriel and I met in graduate school at Winthrop University. We were both working on Master's in Biology. I was a year ahead of him, and we didn't have a lot of the same classes, but we did both take a "Readings in Biology" course, which was essentially a book club that read a science-oriented book every semester and met weekly to discuss it. We obviously got to know each other and fell in love over the next year and even took that course together again, as well as another called "Medical Anthropology," where we learned a lot.
Now that I'm out of vet school and just living life, I already feel like my brain is stagnating. While I definitely continue to learn every day that I work as a vet about medicine, I don't learn about anything else. I already miss being in school and told Gabriel the other day that I missed having a short-term future goal, like graduation. I've never been done with school before now and it feels very weird.
Gabriel found a solution for us that we both love. We are going to take a class together. We've already started, actually. Yale, and other universities, film and post real classes for free online. We've decided to continue learning forever by taking these classes together whenever we have time. I specifically wanted to take a class in the humanities, since I have had SO many science classes and feel much less educated in the area of liberal arts.
We are on our first class right now, which is called "The Philosophy of Death," taught by the professor pictured above. We're only done with the second lecture, but the class focuses on the following questions: Can we survive death? Is suicide ever ethical and does it ever make sense? What would it be like to survive your own death? What does it even mean for a person to die?
We found so many interesting classes we'd like to take, including "Architecture and Islam," "Ancient Greek Culture," and "Developmental Psychology." I can't wait to continue our lifelong education together.
The funny thing is that I actually got a tax credit a few years ago called the Lifetime Learner Credit, or something like that. They weren't kidding.
-Shirin

Funny daddy

Kai laughing for the first time. Daddy is such a funny guy.

Potty training, cont...

Cyrus is now in underwear during the day at Tamala's. This is really happening. Now if we could just get him to go #2 in the toilet, we will almost be there! Cross your fingers for us! :)

-Shirin

Weight loss time

(**This is a multiple post day, so check below this one for more.**)

If you remember, Gabriel and I competed with my parents a year ago in a game called the Fitness Challenge. We were both able to lose a good amount of weight and felt great. Well, since I gained weight again for my second pregnancy and since Gabriel went back to some bad habits (soda drinking), we are back in the position to do another weight-loss competition, this time against one another.
We are aiming to lose ~10% of our body weight in 3 months. We are both using our calorie counting website, The Daily Plate, and we just joined the gym near our house. I've had a hard time limiting my calories, since my hunger drive is so increased due to breastfeeding, but at least I have an extra way to lose weight (I burn about 500 calories a day by making breastmilk). I've started to do several aerobics classes per week, which I hope will help my body get back to normal. I was able to do it after having Cyrus, but it wasn't until almost a year after he was born. I'm not in the mood to be 10 lbs overweight for another whole year. I've already lost some weight, but I've definitely got more to go.
-Shirin

Raring to go to my aerobics class.

Ready for the Stair Master at the gym.

Potty training in full force

Everyone warned us against potty-training Cyrus before Kai was born because of the fear he would want to be more "baby-ish" again. We weren't sure how we felt about it, either way, but he didn't quite seem ready to us then anyway. If you knew Cyrus' personality, you would understand that things go much more smoothly when he feels they are his idea anyway. So...you can imagine how happy we were a few weeks ago when Cyrus came to us and told us he wanted to pee in his potty. We'd been reading to him about pottying and talking to him about his potty, but that was about as far as we'd gone until he decided to do it on his own.

He has good days and bad days, but he is getting better and better at it. When he starts to lose interest, I've made sure to add in another incentive (like Sesame St underwear, getting to flush the big toilet, or his new Elmo potty seat). Today, was a very successful potty day. He either wore underwear (or nothing) almost all day and never had an accident. I'm always terrified he's going to decide to just poop wherever he's standing, but he hasn't done that so far, thank God. He's still in diapers during car rides and overnight, but we are making progress, people. Hallelujah!

-Shirin

Reading with Daddy and wearing Oscar the Grouch underwear.

Eating a banana with a naked butt.

Playing with Kai in pull-ups.

Tamala told us that pull-ups are a crutch, and I have to agree. He doesn't go to the potty nearly as well when he's wearing pull-ups. We don't worry as much about he mess he could make when he has them on, though.

We generally put pull-ups on him when he goes out in public with us, like at Toys R Us today.

We got to see this naked little butt all day long while we were at home, though.

He just went about his business without any pants/underwear/diapers on like it was totally normal.

Talking to Daddy and Kai before going to the potty for the millionth time today (he seriously goes to the toilet SO often, even just for a dribble, but I'm not complaining).

Playing with his train set in between pee breaks.

I don't know if the boys choreographed their pose ahead of time or not (JK)...but, they looked like synchronized swimmers in this shot.

Don't worry, Kai. In 2 years, we'll let you walk around diaperless all day too. You'll also probably fit into this bed a bit better.

Last Cyrus videos for a while

These are the last videos for a while, Daddy. Enjoy. :)
-Shirin


Playing with huge toy dinosaurs at Toys R Us.




Cyrus at Toys R Us, dancing to the Hokey Pokey.




The last 3 videos are Cyrus playing with cool aps on the iPad.

Another video

Another videos of Cyrus playing as per my dad's request.
-Shirin

Videos from a stay at home mom

My dad requested videos of Cyrus playing, so here they are. More are uploading now.
-Shirin

The boys at home

Due to a family situation, Tamala (Cyrus' home daycare lady) has been unavailable this week. Luckily, either Gabriel or I am home with the baby all the time still, so it wasn't a big deal to keep Cyrus home as well. I've actually really enjoyed my time home alone with both boys, although I've definitely gotten less sleep than when I'm just home with Kai. People without kids probably think I'm crazy to worry about spending a whole day alone with my two kids, but I would like to point out that it's very hard to help a two year old pull down him pants to pee in the potty while holding a newborn that can't support his head and wants to nurse (or maybe is literally in the middle of nursing while I follow the two year old around). It is also hard to do anything for myself, like eating or going to the bathroom, with two beings demanding my attention at all times. That being said, it's been fine. Cyrus is a huge help with Kai and is very patient with me if I'm nursing, changing, or bathing Kai. Cyrus also makes being home so interesting and entertaining. I've really enjoyed this time with them and will miss Cyrus a lot when he goes back to Tamala's.

-Shirin

Two tough guys.

Hanging out, post-bath. Well, Kai got a bath, and Cyrus just stuck his whole head in Kai's bathtub when I wasn't looking.

Kai trying to suck on his fist and tickling Cyrus.

Daddy's home from work. It's such a cause for excitement. Cyrus ran up our sidewalk to hug Gabriel when he got home today. What a great way to be greeted after work.

Working on some gang signs.

More grandparents!

One of the best things about having kids is that they lure their grandparents in for a lot of visits. I love having my parents and in-laws in town, so I have benefitted a lot from this incidental finding. I had actually considered braving our first road trip with both babies this weekend by driving to RH (only about 3 hours), but I ultimately decided I wasn't ready for it. So...my parents came to see us!
We had a great time doing what Modaresis do: talking, eating, and playing games. Enjoy the pics.
-Shirin

Yay...Grandma is here.

My mom says we never dress our babies (I guess Cyrus sat around in just a diaper and blanket at first too), but we assured her that he had just spit up all over himself and we'd just removed the onsie. :)

Baba watching Cyrus demonstrate his expert climbing skills.

Of course we played Catan. To keep Cyrus occupied, we gave him some Play-doh. He freaking loves the stuff.

Do Baba and Kai have the same head shape? It's so hard to tell.

Since my dad left his busy desk full of un-done work to come see us, I promised him lots of good food. Here was our dinner: salad, corn on the cob, and spaghetti.

Here was the marinara sauce with squash, mushrooms, and Italian soysage.

As always, Cyrus ropes everyone around him into reading as many books as possible. We were so glad that Grandma Ingrid brought him some new ones. We're both REALLY tired of reading all the old ones over and over.

Poor Baba got all his blueberries from the top of his oatmeal stolen by a little mouse.

"Wha? Who are you people?"

"Oh, my grandparents, cuz you're kissing my head."

"Now, who's that lady with the camera? Oh...it's Mommy!"

What's so funny, Kai?

Oh...your silly older brother lining up all his new animals and pretending to march.

My dad is always concerned with Cyrus' brain development, so he went out and bought him some new interactive toys. In addition to the little animals, he also got a tool set and a railroad track. Boy, his grandfathers sure do spoil him!!!

After my parents left, it was time for a joint brother bath. Here they are getting naked.

Their first bath together.

"Hey, baby Kai. How do you like bathtime?"

Snuggle time with Mommy before bedtime. Good night!