The Syring Grandparent Invasion

They venit they tepidus sursum they reverto ut gelidus tempero. English Translation: "They came, they warmed up, they returned to freezing temps"...:) Grandma & Grandpa Syring were here for 10 days, and stayed at Casa de Syring. Rohan needed a serious fix of his Grandparents since he hadn't seen them since October! I am not sure who wore who out the most, but everyone slept great!
We had an awesome visit with G&G. They took full advantage of our close proximity to the pool, hitting it almost every day, sometimes twice! We crammed a lot in to our short visit. We brought them to the climbing wall, checked out some great restaurants, toured some awesome areas (drooling over the houses), and most importantly, relaxed and enjoyed the time together! G&G even got to visit some friends in Tuscon & Mesa while they were here.
We hit up lots of parks and Rohan showed off his sand digging skills as well as his love of slides. We checked out a new Mexican restaurant, Carolina's, and also ate at TGI Friday's Front Row which is at Chase Field where the Diamondbacks play. It was a really cool view and atmosphere.
We were really appreciative of G&G taking Rohan a couple of mornings/nights wile Mara and I went for our longer runs (and explored some new routes). We even got to go on a date which was long overdue! One night we even took our friend Jeanette's yoga class, which we've been wanting to do for a while. It was an awesome workout! Thanks again G&G for Rohan-sitting!
On one of our long runs we came across a sign for a Festival of Speed car show at Windgate Ranch just up the road from our place. It was free admission so Dad and I headed up. Needless to say the cars were jaw dropping, especially the Ferrari P4/5! These are all cars that reside in the hills of Scottsdale. It was nice of them to show them off for us...:)
We can't say enough about how much we enjoyed the visit. But we can overwhelm you with pictures & videos of their time here.


The Festival of Speed Car Show:


Rohan's Favorite Game Of "Attack The Pillow Tower":



Rohan Successfully Navigates The Tornado Slide:


Rohan Gains Some Speed On The Straight Slide:


Super Rohan Shows Off His Flying Elbow:

Finally A Warm Weekend! ☺

The last few weekends in Phoenix have been rainy and cold, but this weekend made up for it in quanity and quality.  It was around 70°F and plentiful sunshine.  We took FULL advantage of this starting on Thursday.  We took Rohan to his cousin Jackson's favorite park, the McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park.  We had taken Rohan on the train and seen all the sights, but he was only ~5 months old so really what would he have gotten out of it.  First we took him to their HUGE play area (all under awnings) and watched him climb, run, slide, and play in the sand for almost 2 hours.  We forgot it was cash only, so we didn't get a chance to get on the train.  Watching him watch the train made us come back Friday and give it another whirl.  We took him on the train and the carousel.  Mara and I both forgot how nauseating a carousel could be.  Luckily it was only a 5 min ride.  Afterwards Rohan played on the playground a bit more, and between both Thursday and Friday, slept really good those nights.
Saturday I ran into work to finish up an aCGH and afterwards we headed to a park to meet John & Heather.  We hadn't seen them for a while so we figured we'd catch up with them.  Rohan played really well on the equipment, and even has a nice huge bump on his head where he tried to go down the stairs on his face.  He was also doing this hilarious thing where he picked up sand and squeezed it as hard as he could making a priceless face.  Check out the video for more of that, you are guaranteed to laugh.
After the park Rohan took a 3.5 hour nap which timed perfectly for Greg and I.  Greg came up and went climbing at AZR with me.  It's a jaunt he doesn't get to do much, but we had a blast climbing.  We caught up on stuff and Mara got some prime studying done as well.
Sunday we had a 10mi run planned, and it couldn't have been a more beautiful day to run by the McDowell Mountains.  We also got to see the rich bring out their prize cars, so Thompson Peak Parkway was a great place to see some exotic cars.  We saw Bentley's, Ferrari's, Maseratis, Aston Martins, and the alway present Mercedes and BMWs.  Drooling over all those cars makes a 10mi run go so much faster!
After our run we grabbed some picnic fare and headed to the DC Ranch Community Oasis.  It's a park for the DC Ranch neighborhood we run through.  They had a water fountain and a nice playground for Rohan.  About 2 1/2 seconds after we got there Rohan was already running towards the water.  Since it was a nice, sunny day we let him soak himself, which he enjoyed VERY much!
I apologize for the speed our blog loads. There are a TON of videos from this week/weekend we wanted to share.  Hope you enjoy them!


Rohan Climbs The Playground Equipment (Shitty Cell Phone Camera, But Too Fun Not To Post):


Rohan's Train Ride:


Rohan's Death Grip (I LOVE HIS FACE!):


Dad Gets "Sort Of" Greeted By Rohan After Work:


Mara & Rohan Dance In The Fountain:


Rohan Just Being A Spaz (And Overly Tired, But Fun):


Rohan Turns His Craziness Onto The Puppies:


Rohan Practices For Homelessness (As Mara Points Out):

Making The Most of Another Rainy Weekend

What the hell?  I thought the desert was just that, a desert!  Last weekend was rainy and cool, and after this work week of 75°F & sunny we thought we were in for a nicer weekend.  It was a little cooler with rain at night Saturday, and all day Sunday, but that didn't keep us inside.  Read on...
First off, on Thursday Rohan's daycare called and said he had a fever of 102.9°F so I had to pick him up and he also had to stay out of daycare for 24hrs, so I had to take Friday off.  Rohan is fine, he's just cut 4 more teeth in the last 3 weeks (2 bottom teeth, and 2 molars).  He's also growing like a weed and running all over, so the temp isn't a big deal.  It never spiked again, and he's been feeling better since.
Mara was supposed to work on Friday as well, but her preceptor had an emergency surgery Thursday at midnight that lasted until 7am the next day.  He had texted Mara, but she didn't get the text until 6:30.  He cancelled all his patients for Friday so Mara and I had an impromptu family day off!
We made the most of our day off, and the awesome weather that was soon to disappear.  We mailed our taxes out, some notes to friends & family, and Rohan also sent out 3 boxes of baby clothes for cousin Ryan.  After that we went and got a chip in our windshield fixed and grabbed some Indian for lunch. We tried to hit up the Cubs/Diamondbacks game in Mesa, but all the lawn seats were sold out, and we weren't sitting in the bleachers of a sold out stadium with Mr. Rohan.  Since we were already on the SE side of town we decided to explore the Superstition Mountains (part of the Tonto National Forest) a little bit since we've only seen them from the highway.  We drove out to Apache Lake to get some fresh air and explore a little bit.  We got Rohan right by the water and it was about 3 seconds before he found a puddle and was soaked.  Since he was already wet, we decided to let him splash around for a half hour or so.  That kid loves water!  After Apache Lake we continued on to Tortilla Flat.  Tortilla Flat is a small watering hole town that is privately owned and is more of a glorified ghost town than anything.  Apparently thats where all the snow birds go as well, since we were the youngest people by about 40 years, aside from great (-great-great) grandkids.  There was a cool waterfall over the road (yep) that Rohan liked, and of course got his next set of clothes wet as well.
We capped off Friday with sushi with Sasha at Ra, and a few hours of rock climbing.  The whole day, Rohan slept only about 20 minutes, and I drove him around for 30 minutes before climbing, but he was exhausted after climbing.  We've never seen him that tired.  He's a little trooper.
It wasn't a 3-day weekend for me, however.  I had to run into work to start an aCGH experiment was going to do on Friday.  I spent a few hours setting that up, then Mara and Rohan came and we took a coffee break.  I tried one of Starbuck's new Trenta drinks.  It's 30oz instead of their 20oz Venti drink.  They only serve iced coffee & tea in it, but it is A LOT of iced coffee.  After I went back to work I could feel the caffeine in my hands while trying to pipette and finish up my experiment.  After work I met Mara & Rohan at the dog park and we had a nice picnic before heading in.  Rohan was running all over, and having a blast with the dogs.  We had some nice people bring their dogs over (since they liked kids) and Rohan played with them for 40 minutes or so.  One little white punter dog really took a liking to Rohan (see the video below).
We capped Saturday off with (what else?) a 2mi run to AZR and another couple hours of bouldering.  They reset a bunch of routes and we had a lot of fun working on those with friends.  At night it got pretty chilly (relatively speaking) so we ended the night with a nice fire in the fireplace after Rohan went to bed.  We both actually fell asleep by it and woke up around 3am and went to our own bed.
It rained ALL DAY Sunday.  We had a 10mi run planned, and a little rain never hurt anyone...:)  We headed out in a nice drizzle.  It didn't feel too bad since we were running.  Rohan slept almost the whole way and just watched the world go by from behind is rain fly.  At about mile 8 we got hit by a MASSIVE downpour.  We saw the cloud coming from about mile 6 and were just waiting for it.  It rained so hard it hurt to look up.  Good thing we have a nice straight sidewalk to run on!  We had 3 people stop and ask if we wanted a ride home.  We thought that was pretty amazing considering 2 of them had BMWs and we were soaking wet.  Another was amazed that Rohan was so happy in his stroller, which he confirmed with a giant grin.  We ended up running 10.6 miles, and we were FROZEN to the core when we got back.  A hot shower and crockpot lasagna fixed that pretty quickly!
Rohan gave us a great show today by getting into the dog water (again...) and absolutely soaking our entryway.  Hopefully next weekend it will be warmer and we can get him back into the pool!  I'm sure he misses it. In the meantime, enjoy the pics & vids:


Rohan At The Dog Park:


Rohan Plays In Roosevelt Lake:


Rohan Swims In Dog Water (Again...):

Twins!

Before you freak out, we are NOT having twins. This last week Mara finished up her OB rotation, and being the super student she is, she went back to the clinic after her SHELF exam was finished, which most students don't, but that's what makes Mara, Mara...:) She was rewarded with a special delivery. She was able to deliver a set of fraternal twins that they weren't sure would be born while she was there. Mara got to deliver the boy (since boys are always first, right Shell...:P), but the girl was breech, so the preceptor Dr. delivered her. Mara was really glad to have that experience since she didn't really see much her first 3 weeks of OB!
Other than the golf tourney, we didn't do much on Friday other than a 5mi run. It was tough considering we walked around the golf course for almost 8 hours that day! Schroeder the Eunuch is recovering nicely from his procedure, so we were pretty low key with the dogs. No dog park, no walks, so they were pretty stir crazy this weekend. With the rain we had too, it was kind of nice to relax at home a little.
Saturday we had some fun with Rohan and a spoon, as well as re-introduced Oobleck. The spoon is coming along nicely for Rohan. He feeds himself with it, but doesn't load it himself yet, but its an awesome start! We are done with bottles for the most part. Daycare really helped us out with that, only offering sippy cups. He now only gets a bottle at night (only if he's cranky) since it soothes him pretty well. Hopefully we'll be done with that soon too. He's been drinking from his Camelbak and Klean Kanteen really good too so those have been nice to travel with.
Rohan also got reintroduced to Oobleck. He was more curious this time,but still weirded out by it. It was a little cold too, so he wasn't a big fan. We'll try again when it warms up. At least I got to play with it some more...:) We got some video of him with the spoon and another with the Oobleck in the tub for your entertainment.
Other than that, not much else is new. Mara starts her Surgery rotation today, which she is excited for. Ever since she got to put her hand on a beating heart during her Anesthesiology rotation, she been wanting to get back into the OR. Maybe we have a surgeon in the making...:)
Enjoy the multimedia below.


Rohan Eating With A Spoon:


Oobleck Revisited:

MMR & Autism...NO LINK!!!

ANYONE who still believes there is a risk of Autism because of the MMR vaccine needs to read these articles.

The first is the original article by 12 scientists stating the association of the MMR vaccine and Autism.  The second was published in the SAME JOURNAL as the first and it is 10 of the 12 authors retracting their names from the article's statements (A HUGE deal in the scientific community).  The third is a case controlled study showing NO LINK between the MMR vaccine and Autism.

I'm sending this out because of a Masters student in my class that doesn't get her kids vaccinated because of the original article.  Funny how she missed the retraction article.  Shows you that anyone can fall for what they see and hear on TV.  Be sure to do your research before you believe everything you hear.

Please forward this on to anyone who might still believe the link between the MMR vaccine and Autism.  Bottom line, vaccinate your children!

1.) Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, & pervasive developmental disorder in children.pdf

• Original article stating MMR/Autism hypothesis

2.) Retraction of an interpretation.pdf

•  Retractions of original interpretation 

3.) Lack of Association between MMR & Autism with Enteropathy-A Case-Control Study.pdf

• A well done study showing NO link to autism