Our Weekend With A Three-Month Old Cyrus

One thing our family really likes to do together is cook. Saturday morning Shirin and I decided to cook omelettes with lots of veggies and some veggie sausage patties. When you're the mother of an alert three-month old, however, you no longer just cook breakfast; you cook with a 18-lb weight on your chest!
Meanwhile, Baba-joon was putting together Cyrus' new walker under the watchful eyes of Frosty Paws.

He and Calvin have a strange habit of licking plastic.
(Frosty and Calvin, not Saeed and Calvin :-))

Cyrus was very interested in this new contraption...

...but not so much as to prevent him from indulging in one of his favorite activities: sucking on his fist(s).

The new walker required a lot of energy so Cyrus grabbed a quick nap in the swing.

This left the adults an opportunity to try out a new game:

Gabriel, the game master, explains the rules. The object of the game is to arrive at the end with the most coins. The problem is, if you get an answer wrong (remember that it's a survival game) you lose a limb or even your head (!), so making it to the end requires not just collecting coins but retaining your body parts.

Part way through the game Cyrus woke up.

Thinking deeply about an answer to one of his dad's questions.

That yummy fist again.

He's totally engrossed in his feet... "What are those things?"

Cyrus distracts Saeed better than anyone! Saeed was ahead till Cyrus lured his attention away from collecting those gold coins.

The Winner!!
I think at the end Gabriel and I had only our heads left.

Saeed, the unhappy runner up, actually poses for a picture (yes, that's a pose, believe it or not.)

While I had no excuse to be left with only my head, Gabriel had a handicap: a baby with a poopy diaper. After a quick change and snack, Cyrus is ready for some snuggle time.

Gabriel worked on his Mental Magma website with the cute little snoozer on his chest.

Sometimes airing out the bum is a necessity.

He's not so sure about this pose.

Wearing a new diaper and riding high!

Sunday Shirin and I went to a store that we'd wanted to go to for a long time; it's an American/Hispanic grocery store.

During college Shirin lived and studied at the university in Guanajuato, Mexico for six months. This shopping trip is particularly fun for her as she searches out products that she ate while living with her Mexican family.

Here she is ordering fried plantains. She tried speaking in English first, so as to not insult the woman behind the counter, but by the time you see the next picture...

... she had to use her Spanish to make sure she got what she wanted. And what's the little bubbsy doing?....

... just havin' a good time!

Over by the bakery, though, he gave his little pink pig a worrisome stare.

Shirin is fixing us "tortas" for lunch, a Mexican hot sub sandwich. With her left foot she keeps the walker moving to keep Cyrus happy. When we were at the store I noticed her moving the shopping cart back and forth as if it were the stroller.

Look at those Mexican hoagie rolls; they look like big sweet potatoes.

In it she put refried beans, tofurky (our favorite veggie "meat"), cabbage, avocado, tomato, onion, and mayo (veganaise) and then heated them through in a frying pan making the contents warm and the bread toasty. Man, was it good!

From David she learned a great way to cut avocados: cut them in half, slice them while still in the half shell, then scoop them out and the slices are perfect. Very clever, David.

I included this ridiculous picture for Tita. I was reaching for my camera when my finger accidentally depressed the button and took a picture of my shirt... Tita, how old were you when you made this for me?

Nearly everyone has given a baby an "airplane" ride before. Often the end result is messy.

"Oh my... What just happened?"

"I'm sorry mommy."

Well, Shirin's a good sport. Heck, she's been through worse....
like childbirth!

To make the car ride back home a sleepy, quiet trip, Shirin filled his tummy and put him into a milk coma.

Goodbye Siroos-joon.

Some videos (in no particular order) for Khaleh Tita:

A Teaser

We had a wonderful weekend with Cyrus; Shirin and Gabriel were here too :-) My three sweethearts are on their way back home and I'm starting the laundry and cleaning up the kitchen while a couple of videos I took of Siroos-joon are uploading onto YouTube. I also have to sort through all the pics I took, so I probably won't have a post up till tomorrow. Something to look forward to!

Meanwhile you can look at this beautiful baby.

Anarchy On A Thursday Morning

I had an experience yesterday on my way to work that reminded me of a YouTube video Saeed recently forwarded me which I will embed below. All the traffic lights in our area of town were down and the early morning bleary-eyed commuters had to figure out how to get through intersections without getting killed. I think Americans are for the most part quite happy to comply with the directions they are given to keep life orderly, so when the structure for order is absent they aren't quite sure what to do. With a few selfish drivers being the exception, we commuters politely scrambled our way through some fairly large busy intersections without incident.

Other cultures seem to be more used to chaos and I think they are better than we are at dealing with it. Well, maybe not better, but more accustomed. Well, after rewatching the video maybe the more accurate way to describe it is "accustomed to chaos and better at creating it!!" Here is an intersection in Tehran which shows that the wild wild West still exists, only it's in the East!


And if you enjoyed that here's in intersection of two parallel roads in India with no lights at all. AAAAAaah!

Generation Baby Boomer

As a result of being a grandmother (gosh that just sounds so old) I have started to look at my life with a little bit more perspective. I'm not crazy about getting older, but as we all know it's inevitable. I plan to both fight it all the way and accept what I can't help.

A friend sent me this cartoon:
It implies that we don't see ourselves as we must appear to others. It's true; I feel in my head the same as I did when I was in my twenties and thirties. It's actually quite a shock to look in the mirror and see my mother looking back at me (no offense mom, you're looking great at 89!)

Then the same friend sent me this cartoon: "Generation Y"

You know? I don't feel so bad any more. I think I'd prefer to be slightly appalled at my age but have my pants on all the way.
:-)

Devouring A Tree

Ok, I admit, it's a baby tree, but these da*@#^%! caterpillars are basically eating the whole thing in one day! This is one of Saeed's newly planted trees near our back sidewalk. Yesterday we were home most of the day doing laundry, cleaning up, etc., when I walked down the sidewalk and saw what I thought were bright red berries on this little tree.

Look at those nice red berries!

Upon closer examination those were definitely not berries.

AAAAAAaaaaah! Yuk!
This was the view from the underside of the leaf.

They were systematically working their way from leaf to leaf.

When I got over my yuk reaction I decided they were actually quite beautiful: bright yellow with black-bordered white stripes and bright red shoulders and head. No camouflage here! Interestingly, many of them were holding their rear ends up as if posing gracefully in a dance position. I too had to position myself under the branch to take the pictures; as I was doing this I kept feeling little things dropping on my arm...

... oh great, caterpiller poop.

Well all that digested leaf material has to go somewhere!!

I came back in the house and did a couple of loads of laundry and then went out to hang a rug to dry. I thought I'd check on the tree.... where'd it go?

Oh. Great.

What, are the veins to tough for you guys?

I wondered where they all went? Here's is another branch of the same tree and it looks OK.... oh wait.... look at that leaf down towards the base of the branch. Do you see little dark heads peeking up over that chewed leaf?

Excuse me, those are REAR-ENDS poking up over that leaf.

I'm afraid to go out there this morning to see what's left, if anything, of our newest little ex-tree.

Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, & Bhangra

Every once in awhile I like to just put up something fun. Saeed's brother (thanks Masud!) forwarded me a clip from "Britain's Got Talent." The fellows made it to the finals (ultimately got second place) but what I like about it is how the music they used is a combination of three different pieces of music: Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean", Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby", and some Indian bhangra music ("Nachna Onda Nei" sung by Kaka Bhania). I've always enjoyed it when composers create separate melodic lines that when played simultaneously sound even better. One that comes to my mind is Bizet's "L'Arlésienne Suite 2 - Farandole". The result is fantastic: you can hear each melody on it's own but together it becomes something spectacular.

The two fellows in the BGT piece are Suleman Mirza (Muslim, London-born of Pakistani origin) and Madhu Singh (a Sikh, also British.) The music starts off with the beat from "Billie Jean", stops briefly to introduce the beat from "Ice Ice Baby", then plays them together as Suleman dances like Michael Jackson. When Madhu comes out he introduces the bhangra music which is then played on top of the other music. It's very creative:



Here's the actual soundtrack the guys used, by Tigerstyle.

Working Amongst The Raindrops

When Saeed's working on a project in the yard not even a late afternoon thunderstorm stops him for long. He's in the process of laying down more gravel and after the storm passed he was right back out there. I found him here when I came home from work yesterday.

Whew! That's hard work.

The beauty of water droplets:

Nature's diamonds.