Memorial Day Weekend

Shirin and Gabriel left the boys with us this weekend for their annual reunion with Shirin's best buds from college. This year it's in DC. In order to get Cyrus and Kai (especially Kai since he has never spent a night away from his parents) comfortable with our house and their beds they made the trip to RH last weekend. Here you see Gabriel reading to them in what will now be Kai's bed, the old crib with the front rail removed.

After reading time is over Cyrus will then move to Shirin's old twin bed.

It was a good plan. The boys have done very well this weekend. Kai in particular is a mommy's boy, and Shirin was worried he may have trouble at bedtime without her. He did ask for her but Baba and I reminded him that Mommy and Daddy were far away and would be home in two days. He seemed OK with that answer and after some head stroking and singing they both fell fast asleep.

I haven't taken many pictures with my digital camera this weekend but I took a few with my iPhone. I think those iPhone pics are poor quality in comparison so let me just post a couple of videos I took with my camera.

Here is Baba reading Dr. Seuss with Cyrus. Chappu was listening as well but as soon as I walked up to film she left. Don't they look cozy?

Kai was playing the keyboard to make me dance and every time he would turn off the music I would have to freeze in place. It must have been very funny, at least to a nearly two year old.

Saturday Baba needed a nap and was downstairs, so I took the boys upstairs and let them loose. What silliness.

Confession Of An Animal Lover

I killed three animals last Friday. I also saved two but I killed three. Not good for an animal-loving, peace-loving vegetarian. I have cried about it but I need to tell the story and hopefully it will help me move passed it.

Friday actually started off really great. For two days we'd been hearing a kitten cry outside our office in the bushes and I was finally able to find him, take him to the vet to be checked out, and then home to be cared for like he deserved. (More on that story later!) On the way home from the vet with a kitten in a box on my front seat I saw a big turtle in the road trying to cross over in front of traffic. I jumped out of my car, picked up the turtle, ran him to the other side of the road, and waved thanks to all the people I stopped in traffic. I thought, "Man, I've saving animals right and left!" (I'll leave out the part about my car door swinging shut with the motor running and kitten inside. Thankfully the door didn't lock before I got back to the car. Lesson learned: take the time to shut off the engine and take the key.)

When I got home I tucked the kitten safely away in our bathroom, fed my kitties, and then proceeded to get the place ready for Shirin, Gabriel and the boys who were due in that night. I parked my car at the street's edge so they could pull in to the top of the driveway and as I walked back I noticed a snake near my mailbox. It wasn't a very big snake, maybe six inches long, but I'd never seen that type of snake before.

What to do? Normally I'd get Saeed to come look at it with me to see what he thinks, but he was still in California. Then I thought about the fact that two cute little boys would soon be running around outside and decided not to take any chances. I ran over the snake with my car; it was awful. I can still see it. I felt upset but relieved, thinking that I'd protected my grandchildren from possible danger.

When I walked back up to the house I saw another snake on the sidewalk leading to the side door and another one on the sidewalk leading to the back door. I reasoned that a nest of snake eggs must have hatched and that being the strong, capable, Midwestern woman that I am I would kill them as well and save my family from certain doom. I was worried about the possibility of more snakes and called Saeed who was 3,000 miles away to see if he thought I should do something more.

Saturday, Gabriel's friend David came over and looked at my picture of the snake. He said he didn't think it looked poisonous. I was shocked. Really? I thought they were copperhead babies. So are you saying I've killed three animals thinking that they may be poisonous and they probably weren't? I was horrified, but the weekend was busy and I shoved it to the back of my mind to deal with later.

Well this morning was later. As I was taking my shower it hit me, and it hit me hard. I killed three little snakes that didn't need to die. And I was the one who did it. I, the one who will pick up spiders and ants to take them out of the house instead of killing them. I, the one who will stop her car in traffic to save a turtle. I, who would rather skip a meal than eat meat. I, who will pay more for a bottle of shampoo because animals were not harmed in the making of that product. I violently killed three snakes. I cried while taking my shower, and thinking about it I'm teary now.

I am so sorry little snakes. You were beautiful and minding your own business. I was wrong to do what I did but I didn't know any better. I thought you might hurt Cyrus and Kai, but I didn't stop to figure out if you were poisonous first. I'm still not actually positive you weren't poisonous, but I think you just a cute little trio of worm snakes. I am sorry. I am so very sorry.

Now Back To July 2011

Why do kids love to be naked? Here is Cyrus straight out of the tub. I remember him running around stark naked until a phone call from Tita slowed him down. Did she know she was talking to a naked person?

Happily Photoshop has an erase tool.

Is he cute or what? Let me enlarge that face...

What a little Gerber baby.

 It's so funny to watch Kai toddle along now that he can run.

December 2011 Visit

I ran across some pics from our visit six months ago. Most of us look about the same but Kai, being the youngest, has changed the most. It was really fun to look at these; I don't think I'd ever looked at them after uploading them!

Yum - breakfast!

Mr. Blue Eyes still in his high chair, still with just peach fuzz for hair...

... and still just using sign language for "all done."

Notice all the tissues on the couch and floor. Winter = runny noses for kids.

Also notice that Kai appears to be reading to Gabriel.

Satin joined the nice warm laps.

Dragon Boy

Lookit Baba - it's Dragon Boy!

Cats and dragons everywhere!

Earl with his mommy.

Getting some fuzz therapy while talking with Tita.

I usually just remind you to click on a pic to enlarge, but this just had to be posted as big as possible!

The Weight of the Nation

I plan to watch this tonight and tomorrow night. As I watch the trailer I wonder if there's anything in it that I don't already know, but I am overweight and will watch it because I should. It's on tonight at 8 PM on HBO (parts 1 & 2) and then again tomorrow night (parts 3 & 4) at 8. Here's the trailer.

Obi Update

The fact that Obi is sleeping in the chair of choice for all creatures upstairs both human and feline, means things are going well. No one chased him out of the prime location and he snoozed for a couple of hours. He even got up to eat, use the litter box, and went right back to sleep again. Yay!

Lupe was snoozing on our bed.

And Banu was taking a bath in her favorite look-out-spot bed.

In fact now that I think about it I remember waking up Friday morning with Obi lying on our bed near my feet. He still sometimes asks to go back to his regular side but he has made peace with his new location.

The Lonely Polygamist

I finished another audiobook titled, The Lonely Polygamist. Not long ago I blogged about us finishing the series, Big Love, so you may be thinking that I have a thing about polygamist Mormon families, but I don't. It was just another NYT Bestseller available from the audiobook section of our library.

Golden Richards, the husband of four wives and father of 28 children, is about as unlike the patriarch of Big Love, Bill Hendrickson, as you can get. Bill Hendrickson is charismatic, strong-willed, domineering (usually in a good way) and very capable. By contrast Golden Richards is passive, unsure, and incapable of leading is family in the right direction. As Udall lays out the story of Golden trying to survive the demands of his many children and particularly dominant first wife, I experienced passages that either made me laugh out loud or pulled me into the painful life of a man who suffered as a boy and continues to live through unbearable sorrows. It is both heartbreak and comedy.

What's interesting to me is how both this book and Big Love make polygamist families feel "normal". The first few chapters/episodes feel shocking but in no time I end up focusing on the human elements common to all families, the issues of need, love, and belonging. It's almost as if polygamy is just another ethnicity, another flavor that makes the family different from mine, but not so much that I can't relate.

Also interesting is that I almost didn't finish listening to the end. At first I couldn't really tell where Udall was going with this story. And then as he highlights certain characters, one, a 13 year old son named Rusty, is obsessed with things that are either offbeat or related to body functions; the humor of body functions is any thing but funny or interesting to me, but I soon realized that Udall was letting me inside Rusty's head and heart. I ended up falling in love with this weird kid and cried when (spoiler alert) when he died. I'm glad I stuck with The Lonely Polygamist and give it a thumbs up.

Answer To A Veterinarian's Perspective

First read Shirin's comment on the previous post and then this picture will make sense as to why I posted it this morning. They were definitely checking each other out but this is what came next:

Those are my new uniforms you see strewn across my bed. I was unpacking them and I think Banu liked the smell of the new fabric and Obi, as always, was attracted to the plastic.

Not Exactly Bed Buddies

Look who jumped up on the bed together this evening:

That's Banu on the left and Obi on the right. They're not exactly best friends but they were both up there for about five minutes. This would have been unthinkable two weeks ago.

I'm In Survival Mode (Again)

Monday evening the Yousefians invited us over for dinner to see Saba, Neda, and Neda's German boyfriend Fredrick, before they all scattered to their respective locations. (Sorry, no pictures.) Saba is leaving next week for a three-year residency program in Pennsylvania in her path towards an MD degree and Neda & Fredrick have already returned to UC Davis where they are earning their Masters in ?sustainable agriculture? They have proposed a project in Cambodia and are waiting to hear if it's approved, so that may be where they head next.

Saeed and I wouldn't have missed this gathering for anything. The Yousefians are like family and Neda and Saba go way back with our girls. We feel so proud (not that we had anything to do with it) that Neda and Saba are such awesome people and are developing into such accomplished women. I really liked Fredrick too.

Unfortunately I paid the price of seeing them by getting to bed late on Monday night and getting up at 4 am to work with a doctor in Ballantyne on Tuesday - maybe five hours of sleep. And the work on Tuesday was taxing - 10 stressful hours straight without so much as a five minute break to eat lunch. Needless to say I was a zombie when I got home. Fortunately I'm married to someone who has retired from one job and hasn't started the next one, so he's picked up my slack.

So if I was supposed to do something for anyone out there in blog land, I'm sorry, I probably forgot! I'm eating my lunch right now at Earth Fare and am starting to feel human again. I need to be 100% by this weekend since we're going to Athens to celebrate someone's 4th birthday! (and kiss a little broken hoofie)