why we call him the pumpkin

A year ago tonight, I posted this to my blog:

Monday, October 31, 2005 afraid of the dark Calvin and Hobbes both speak for me. I love autumn, but there is an unavoidable melancholy in the fall. It's been cold and very rainy in this part of the world. Hard to hike on the weekends when the weekends have all been so miserable out. Then yesterday was gorgeous -- shorts and sandals in the last few days of October, clear blue skies -- but the missus is neck deep in paperwork, so I ended up heading out by myself. I took the iPod, of course. Mises University 2005 lectures for the drive to and from the state park, but I listened to The Map that Changed the World while hiking. Other than missing my beloved hiking partner, I found it perfect. Except that it's late October and it was already getting dark earlier -- AND we set the clocks back this weekend, so the 6pm darkness came around 5pm and I finished the loop in pitch black. It's amazing the things that look like monsters and bad guys in total darkness. I'm glad I decided at the last minute to stick to the paved trail instead of taking our usual meander through the woods. Tonight is Halloween, but I got a fair spooking a day early this year.

But what I didn't know when I posted that, was that a few hours later, my beloved missus would suggest that we go to CVS and buy a home pregnancy kit, and that shortly after that we'd be standing together in the bathroom of our Swarthmore apartment, Halloween night, looking down at the word etched in liquid crystal:

Sunday night I went walking in the woods again, first time without my wife in 364 days. Once again, I was listening to a history audiobook, this time on Ancient Greece. Unlike last time, however, I had a baby boy on my chest. We made it back well before dark.

Here's the boy in the hat his mother made him this morning:

- papa