Ross, Rachel, Helen, and Arthur

Arthur had his 4 month exam this week. He officially weighs in at 21 pounds, 5 ounces. He is also 26.5 inches long and his head is 44 cm in diameter. His pediatrician charts all of this information to compare with average values. Arthur has been literally off the charts since birth, but happily his growth rate is starting to level off.

Today, Arthur is four months old. Last night, he weighed in at 21.6 pounds. He's a big boy.

Since I changed cell phones, I downloaded all the photos off my old phone. It was such an energy barrier to get the photos off the phone while I was using it, that I rarely did it, which means that those pictures are like a time capsule, a random sampling. You can see them all in our gallery, but these are some good examples:

I do a fair amount of travel for work. Most of the time it consists of flying across the country and sitting in a conference room. Admittedly, we're usually talking about intellectually stimulating topics like planetary science and spacecraft. This meeting certainly had all of those elements, but it also took place on Hawaii's big island at Volcanoes National Park, and we got a chance to do some hiking and see the sights.

At 3 months Arthur's eyesight has improved enough that he can track his sister from across the room. Up until now, he only knew his sister as an entity that would randomly appear out of nowhere, squish him, then vanish. She is now his favorite moving object. Whenever she gets close enough to talk to he gives her a big, happy smile.

I am savoring this because the next step will be "He's touching my stuff!" "She's looking at me!" I will enjoy this while it lasts.

On a whim when Rachel was ordering pizza, she also got some cannoli, which Helen enjoyed, as you can see. However, she spontaneously started calling them broccamoli, despite our repeated enunciations of the correct pronunciation.

Despite the burglary the day before, we still had a good holiday weekend. My parents were in town, and we went to two different holiday BBQs. One at Jason and Gwen's and one at the Allamandolas'.

If you haven't heard yet, our house was broken into. No one was hurt, but they got away with some of our pricier electronics.

Typically, it happened the day before a holiday and the same day that Jim and Cheryl were coming to visit. I went home a little earlier so that I could run by the grocery store on the way home. I entered, saw the TV was missing, said "Oh, shit!" and ran out of the house. It was very reassuring when the first police officer arrived within a couple minutes, followed by four more vehicles!

We visited the Roaring Camp Railroads today with our friends, Jonathan, Katie, and Finn.

Arthur had his two month check up today: 24.75 inches long and 16 pounds 13 ounces. I'll type that again: 16 pounds 13 ounces. No wonder my arms are killing me. When I was looking at the scale I read the ounces as pounds by mistake. Then I saw the 16. Geez Laweez.