A Boy And His Toys

Here are just a few more pictures from this weekend. Pretty soon they'll all leave me again and the house will seem very quiet indeed, sigh... I think the kitties will be happy though, except for Chappu, who seems to have decided she likes the strange bald cat that crawls towards her every chance he gets!

Merry First Christmas to the little boy with the cute little sideways smile!

Havin' too much fun!

Poor Gabriel. He was up so much last night with Cyrus that we had to wake him up to do stockings... huh? What stockings?

Shirin, also sleep deprived, perked right up with the prospect of a hidden toy surprise in her box of Cracker Jack!

You may see the indicator in the white "naughty" section of Cyrus' stocking but when Santa filled the stocking the indicator was on the top section labeled "Nice."
Who did that?

A nice blue and white striped hat...

... a new bib with a kitty on it...

...jus' stylin' dude...

...oh yeah, and socks.

In preparation for walking Cyrus has begun transferring from one support object to another fairly well. Listen for his new sound - the consonant "D" pronounced "dih" :-)


Apparently, I too am a support object. Listen to the impact as he hits the floor; that's one sturdy kid!:



Here's a short little video of Cyrus heading for Chappu. I'm not sure why he stopped short; usually he goes for the gold! Yesterday he actually grabbed her face gently and she just sort of moved her head back. I thought she'd walk away (or kill him!):


Cyrus is preparing for the next Florida gathering by practicing his ball skills:


Figuring out the new electronic book (his version of a kindle):

First Taste Of Persian Food

I know, the pictures don't match the title, but that's because the title refers to the first video. I'll be talking about "today" but since it's after 1 AM it's actually tomorrow so "today" is yesterday... oh never mind.

After a nice breakfast Shirin, Cyrus, and I decided (it was Cyrus' idea) to take a walk around Cherry Park. It was pretty warm today so the walk felt great.

I'd be all smiles if someone were pushing me around in a stroller too.

Ok, the set up to the first video is that Cyrus had already eaten his sweet potatoes and was experimenting with his first taste of Persian food before I began recording. Since he's eaten pretty simple stuff so far the Persian food was more of a gamble, but he clearly liked it and kept eating it even though he wasn't that hungry any more.


And the clean up:

He's Gonna Find Out Who's Naughty Or Nice

Uh-oh, I think someone may be in trouble. He's only got a few more days to convince Santa he doesn't belong in that lowest black zone on his stocking labeled, "Lump of Coal Naughty."

Cyrus' stocking

Videos Galore

Shirin's post from a few days ago mentions that Anahita isn't getting enough Cyrus media, so here we go.

Saeed took this video for you, Anahita. Hope you like jumping!


This story is told in two videos. Cyrus had never before seen the crawling Winnie the Pooh bear and is very clearly frightened of it. I quit recording so he could climb up into my lap and get some comfort. During the second video he gets to watch Winnie from afar and his Grandpa's silly clapping puts him at ease. Damn that Winnie the Pooh!




This next one is really pretty silly, but we were trying out Cyrus' new stroller. I love his reaction to my interview question, sort of like, "I don't have to answer that question."


Here the men are making more manly noises. I love the way Cyrus first goes into a trance with the back rub.


OK Khaleh Tita, that's it for now.

Our New Buddy

We just got home from our new best buddy's house. In an effort to give Shirin some more study time we went to play with Cyrus and do a little laundry. We were pretty busy so I didn't take any pictures (except this one.) In addition to laundry we did a little bit of cleaning. Saeed kindly cleaned out and reorganized the refrigerator; I hope Shirin and Gabriel can find everything and don't starve to death.

So why do I call Cyrus our new buddy? Because he really seems to like us and want to be with us. Of course, as we discussed later on the drive home, he is a very friendly baby and probably is totally ecstatic with anyone who will perform the required support tasks, but we seemed to detect a new degree of recognition (on his part) of who we are. Well, that's our story and we're sticking with it.

We did take some video though, so I'll be uploading and posting as they're ready.

Tail Chaser

Lupe still thinks she's a kitten. She chases her tail every morning, sometimes while we're still asleep. (Yes, this is the same cat that wakes me up a lot.) Usually this event occurs on our bedroom floor while we're getting ready for work, so I've never stopped long enough to record it. She's pretty noisy about it too; I can be downstairs and hear her upstairs thumping on the floor as she twirls around pouncing on her tail.

She also likes to chase her tail in the bathtub while I'm scooping litter, so last night I taped it. I love the way she stands upright but looks over her shoulder at the wiggly little tip until she can't resist it any longer... and when she sits on her rump and reaches down in front of her to grab it... and when she walks toward the drain and then whips around to surprise her tail. Silly girl.

Confessions Of A Muggle

As I mentioned in an earier post, I am reading the Harry Potter series. I didn't want to read them, I never thought I'd read them, and I certainly didn't think I'd like them.

I'm hooked.

I'm on book #4 of seven. I obtained the first three books through BookMooch, the online book swapping site I use to get books, but #4 was unavailable. I felt like an alcoholic without a drink on a Sunday morning in South Carolina. Desperate circumstances call for desperate measures: I called a friend and asked her to bring #4 to work for me to borrow. When I first saw her at work I tried to nonchalantly greet her as always, but I'm sure she saw the addict's gleam in my eye. Did she have it with her? - yes!

So, what makes an adult who's not into reading juvenile literature fall in love with these stories? I don't know... I'm still trying to answer that question. Surely Rowling writes well... the plots are good... the characters are entertaining... but is that enough? Perhaps the appeal is in the mystery, the thrill of finding out who done it, and the magical events which are clever and not too far-fetched. I'll just keep reading and let you know when I've figured it out.

Ta ta for now, you muggles!

Don't Forget To Shop Kindly

As you do your Christmas shopping, consider the full impact of your choices. A couple of ideas to consider...

*1) Do not give an animal as a gift. An animal needs care and attention for the length of its lifetime. Shelters are full of animals that were "a good idea at the time."

*2) Do not give a gift that is made from the suffering of animals: leather, fur, meat, etc..

*3) Look to be sure toiletries, perfumes, etc. have not been tested on animals and meet the Leaping Bunny criteria.

*4) If you have pets be sure to keep them safe and secure during all the holiday changes. Decorations can be deadly if ingested, noise and chaos can upset animals used to a quiet house, and opening the door for guests can result in an indoor pet running outside and getting lost.

Most people don't hurt animals on purpose.

Make sure you don't hurt them accidently.

Exhaustion

Ok, so maybe my exhaustion doesn't compare with that of the parents of a certain six month old, who have recently been woken up every two to three hours throughout the night. But I have a demanding baby of my own named Lupe.

The Rascal.

Lupe seems to think that I don't need to sleep past 4:30, 5:00 in the morning, weekend or not. She sits on top of me and digs at my body till I wake up. If that doesn't work she jumps up on the bookshelf to pull on my earring display so that it crashes (repeatedly) into the wall, "clank, clank, clank, clank."

You would think we'd get mad at her and throw her out of the bed, or even shut her out of the bedroom, but ahhh.... then you don't understand the love of a true cat lover. Usually if it's a weekday I just get up since I have to get up really early anyway. But if it's a weekend we just open our eyes and look at each other and laugh, and see if she'll let us go back to sleep.

Imagine my joy when I found this drawing on a blogger's website. "Speck" has two blogs, one to just chat about what's going on, and the other more oriented to her artwork. I wrote her that she has captured a bit of my life in this sketch: Layli sleeping on my left side, and Lupe digging at my head. It looks so cute, so picturesque, so... comfy. Is there a way to sketch exhaustion? Yaaaawwwwnnnnn... ...hhhhmmm ... ...I'm going to have to start going to bed at 7:30.

Sparkly Surprise

The other day our mail carrier left a big box on our front steps. Hmmm... what could that be? Upon closer inspection it was from Martha, but it seemed too early for a Christmas present and the box was so light I wasn't sure there was anything in it! As you can see she made a beautiful decorative Christmas basket full of shiny miniature gifts, pine cones and lights.

These are not just any pine cones though. The larger cones are from the campgrounds where she and Ken stayed when they came to visit two springs ago. The smaller ones are from the sweet gum tree in our back yard. She called them "space ship pods" which very accurately describes their appearance! They are decorated with a sparkly paint that makes it look like they have snow on them. How neat that she made this with cones/pods from the local flora.

Oooh! And how pretty! This picture doesn't do it justice.

Thanks Martha!