Edward sailed through his six-month check-up this afternoon. He weighs almost 18 pounds (45th percentile) and is 26 1/4 inches long (35th percentile.) He is doing all the things his doctor expects of a boy his age--smiling, laughing, rolling over, grabbing, moving objects from one hand to the other (with a stop in the middle for the mouth of course!) He's eating and sleeping well (except for our recent run of 2 a.m. wake-ups.) No new instructions, really, other than to watch him grow and be ready to childproof the house when he becomes mobile. He screamed when he got his shots (but who wouldn't?) but he calmed down pretty quickly.

Probably the most interesting tidbit is that he does have an ear infection after all. Same ear as before--left side. Our doctor said it's not uncommon that it would look fine on Monday and be infected now. Virus leads to fluid in ears leads to infection and just one day can make a difference. That explains last night's screaming fits, I guess, but I wish we'd been able to start recovery on Monday rather than waiting until today. Let's hope this is the answer--John and I really need some sleep! The hand, foot and mouth disease isn't getting any worse--that is, no more visible spots on his hands and feet, none in his mouth, and the original spots are starting to blister over. So I guess we can check that one off on the list of childhood illnesses. I'm sure many more await.

The car did not have such an easy diagnosis. In fact after running it through a battery of tests that took a full page to enumerate, the Mazda folks report that there is nothing wrong with it. They have no explanation for Saturday's break-down, except possibly that we got some bad gas. On the one hand it's nice to know that our brand-new car is fine, but on the other hand, we're a little gunshy about getting back on the open road with nothing "fixed." John drove it around this afternoon and couldn't replicate the problem. Let's just hope it was a fluke. For future reference though, don't buy gas at the Citgo on Ingersoll in Des Moines!

This week also marked Edward's first professional portraits--preserving the memories of his six-month self for the ages. We joined the "smile saver" club (or some similar goofy name) at Sears, which has a few ongoing benefits (like no sitting fee for two years) and also some that change from month to month. This month's promotion allowed you to buy a CD with all the images plus copyright ownership for a fraction of the normal price. So we did that, which allows us to post a few favorites here.