A new life; same as the old life?

As you know the US has just celebrated Thanksgiving; that annual ritual of eating a lot, shopping a lot and putting out the Christmas decorations. As you can see from this picture, I am but a mere blot on the landscape when compared to some of the other efforts around the US, but it is a process of building up. Talk of shopping though, and I fall even more short of the traditional American Thanksgiving shopper. Some stores open at midnight on Thanksgiving, most waiting until around 4 or 5am the following morning, with people waiting in line for literally hours to grab a "door buster" bargain. Usually some limited stock electronics item, a laptop, flat screen TV, etc that can be 50-80% lower than the regular retail. We sauntered out around 10am, when most people had already put in a full day. The traffic was OK, the parking lots full but not bursting, and the bargains not quite so cheap, but still good value. We picked up a video camera, hence the title of this post, for a me...

and the goose is getting fat, etc, etc. Christmas lights are starting to appear all over the neighbourhood, and in fact I put some of ours up this weekend. I will post some pictures of ours next week, when they are all up and switched on. Of course most of the stores have theirs up already and both Libertyville and Chicago have theirs up on the streets. There was a big parade & celebration yesterday in the city, with Mickey in attendance. I had reported previously that AJ wasn't keen on bath time. She has however come around to the idea, and, whilst not exactly smiling and playing yet, she is at least not screaming anymore. She copes fine with water in her face too, which is great. She is smiling a lot and starting to settle into a routine too. Some nights she even sleeps for 5-6 hours, which doesn't make any difference to me, cos Lorraine was doing that anyways, but it certainly makes her life much easier! Click here for a few more pictures .

For the last few weeks we have been having trouble getting any wind out of AJ. She was uncomfortable a lot but wouldn't burp. We did get quite a lot of dribbling and projectile though! She went to the doc this week for her first shot, general check up and some advice on the milk/wind issue. First things first, the little glutton has put on over two pounds in as many weeks, and she is now 11lb 5oz. She is 22" long, which, when correlated with her age and weight, puts her in the 95th percentile. Bizarrely though, her head is only in the 75th percentile. The doc said she was developing well, starting to support her own head a little already, and all of those skin blemishes you can see in the pictures are apparently normal. The long and short of the milk issue, is that we have changed to a new product especially for fussy and gassy babies, I wonder if Lorraine needed this when she was a child, or maybe now, although she has no problem passing gas. it seems to run in her family, as...

Those of yo who have known me more than five minutes will know that I have a love for old cars. MGs in particular in the UK, but they don't have too many of those here. What they do have are lots of muscles cars though, old Mustangs, GTOs, Camaros, Corvettes, etc. Last year we went to the classic car show at Cuneo, a local attraction. The turn out was OK, but this year it was excellent. I took lots and lots of pictures, and even managed to find a couple of MGs, pictured here, and this old Ford, perhaps the first ever people carrier/mini van? Click this link to check out the rest of the fabulous cars.

Just uploaded a few pictures from October. Most of them are from a harvest festival thing at the hospital she was born at, or en route to there. She is almost 6 weeks old, and we are REALLY hoping that the grizzly period will end on schedule at 8 weeks!!!! Anyways here are the pictures ..