Ross, Rachel, Helen, and Arthur

A conversation in the car this morning:

Helen: You are a tasty treat!
Me: Are you calling your brother a tasty treat?
Helen: Yes!
Arthur: Guh!
Me: (laughing) He'd be kind of hard to eat, don't you think?
Helen: (unintelligible) .. fall out.
Me: Something would fall out?
Helen: His bones would fall out.
Me: His bones would fall out if we ate him?
Helen: Yes.
Me: That wouldn't be very good.
Helen: No, it wouldn't

I have been back over a week and am slightly ashamed of my failure to report to you, my dear friends and family. My poor excuse is that in that week Ross left town, Arthur got another tooth, we all got sick, and I slept less than 4 hours a night. I wanted to wait until I stopped hallucinating before writing this.

We had planned to have Helen's party at the park, but the weather was rainy, so at the last minute we decided to just have it at the house. This meant that Rachel and I had been planning on the Park (and had been neglecting the house that week what with Halloween and all), and then had to scramble to clean and come up with things to keep the kids occupied inside the house. Things worked out fine, the kids all got to wear their costumes one last time, we had some party games, but the kids mostly played with each other and Helen's toys. The rain let up enough for us to have the pinata outside and for some kids to play in the back yard a bit. Arthur even managed to wear someone's Batman mask for a bit.

This was Arthur's first Halloween, and he was mostly just along for the ride. He watched avidly as Helen and Mom carved the pumpkin. The Child Care center had a lot of outings to show off costumes around the Center during the day, and then had a Halloween party at the end of the day. Helen and I went Trick or Treating when we got home. Helen was excited about the concept, but often shy and apprehensive when it came to visiting a house and ringing the doorbell. Helen decided to go as a witch, and Arthur was her cat. The cat outfit was cute, but rather thick, which made him warm, so he didn't spend a lot of time in it.

The 6 months mark passed while we were out of town in Ithaca, but the check-up was on Monday. So, the statistics are 24 pounds, 27.5 inches long, and 45.5 cm (head diameter). That's 97th %, 90-95th %, and 95-97th%, respectively. Yes, he is big. We also have one more tooth for a total of two on the bottom, with another one about to come out on top.

My father's family comes from Morton, IL, where pumpkin festivities are a big deal. So this year, Helen and I decided to head over to Half Moon Bay and visit their pumpkin festival.

For some reason, Helen was involved in a number of kitchen projects this month that involved mashing. There was home-made applesauce, mashed potatoes, and banana bread.

We have started the great ripping of 2008. We are organizing our physical CDs and Rachel is ripping them into an electronic form for easy portability, and the physical CDs are going into storage. While the computer will happily organize the digital files, we still have to physically sort them. So Helen helped me put out alphabet blocks and sort the CDs by artist. Or she started to, and then lost interest.

Today, Arthur was chewing on my knuckle and I thought "Ow!" I took a peek in there and saw the tiniest bit of tooth pointing out of the gum. Like one of those ah-ha moments, I immediately put together the incredible bout of fussiness last Sunday and the seeming sudden cheeriness. Good going, buddy.

Arthur poses for his first GQ cover: