Ross, Rachel, Helen, and Arthur

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.

So this went quietly by. At the same time Arthur turned six months, our marriage turned six years. With that, plus Helen's birthday, plus Halloween, it is far, far too easy for us to sweep our anniversary aside as we did this year. Well, maybe next year.

However, I will take this opportunity to share my mother's thoughts about our anniversary:

Dear Ross and Rachel,
Happy 6th Wedding Anniversary! We hope you celebrate the day in some way. The memories of that day are still very vivid to us both.
I had to laugh when I asked Dad about what he remembers about that week. He said that the schedule was just perfect (sounds like him)! I remember the beautiful day, the neat place you were married, and the wonderful feeling about the whole event. You both have come a long way in six years. We wish you both the best.

Love Mom and Dad

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:

Our friend Scott gave us this great follow-along bike. It is a small bike with one wheel that attaches to the back of an adult bike so that a kid can ride along behind. Helen and I cleaned it up and put air in its tires. However, when we went to try it out we came to the conclusion that it was a little big for Helen at this time, so we put it away for later.

Helen's friend Abhay had a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's. It was Helen's first trip, and she had a great time. She really enjoyed all of the games and the child-sized hamster-run. However, when the person in the Chuck E. Cheese suit came out at cake-time, Helen ran. Her love for cake enticed her out of her hiding place, but wasn't enough to get her close to the cake until the costumed personality had left. Even after that she was kind of looking over her shoulder just in case he reappeared while she was eating cake.