A new life; same as the old life?

OK so it isn't week three of the vision, but it is for the diet. Let's start with the diet though, as I am very excited about it. In the first week I lost 8.5lbs as you know. In the 2nd week it was a little more sedate at a mere 3lbs. Next week in Vegas is gonna be a huge challenge to have fun but still be mindful of the diet. On the vision front, I have just been for my week 1 check up. All is good, although my eyes are a little dry. The doctor isn't worried especially with the time of year and we have simply upped the dosage on the artificial tears for a bit. I am able to see at a level of 20:15, with almost 20:10. This basically means that I can read/see things clearly from 20 feet that most normal people can only see from 15 or 10. There may still be some regression over the next 6 months, but I have free lifetime adjustments too, so if needs be I can go back. So I am very excited about the golf season starting and if anyone wants to help me celebrate by buying me these...

Charlie probably will, although he said it when I had my MG, so he can't use it twice! This week I have been starting my soon to be 40s with a few significant changes. many of you will know that I have been talking about laser eye surgery for many years. Mostly cos I hate "fart-arsing" around with my glasses, skiing, driving, walking around, etc. So I took the plunge! I went to the same company that Tiger Woods went to, and obviously I will seeking a refund if I am not immediately accepted on the PGA Tour. I had Intralase LASIK, involving a laser cutting a flap on my eye, laser adjustment of the Cornea, and then replacement of the flap. This is a pretty cool little video of the process, but instead of the blade shown cutting the corneal flap, mine was done with a laser, as I said. There is lots more information here and here if you are interested. It is now two days post-op and so far so good. I can see better than ever, 20:15 for those in the technie know. It is pos...

Nope not for a minute. Despite the record high temperatures in the last week, and tornadoes blowing through the next state (less than 1 hour north), winter is coming right back at us this week. Temperatures in the 30s and snow up to 3" is expected tonight. All of that to say, that I don't get to play with my new golf clubs yet. My local course, which in the past has been quite aggressive in opening throughout the winter as weather allows, has taken a much more conservative approach this year. So it looks like Vegas may well be my first opportunity, assuming I take them with me. On a much happier note, Addison is continuing to develop well, and at just over 3 months is already sleeping most of the night, pretty much holding her head up all the time and laughing. Check out this video to hear that magical sound! Her list of talents now runs, in approximate order of achievement, to smiling sticking her tongue out at Lorraine blowing raspberries and bubbles for me holding her he...

Well the in-laws came over for Christmas and what a jolly time we all had. I was in Canada for the first two days of their trip and arrived home on the Friday night, on yet another delayed United Flight, I really hate flying United, to find both Madeleine and Jan hogging the baby! The next day, Saturday, Madeleine was heading into the city to meet with Ian who was flying in and spend a few days hanging out in their penthouse suite. We went to my buddy Steve's house for a Christmas party, where I got to play bar tender in his very cool basement bar, that he built himself. On the Sunday we had all arranged to go down to the city and have the famous brunch at the Hancock Center, Signature Room . We arrived very early and got in line, although the line was very short, I think the freezing weather must have put some people off. The brunch was excellent and I think pretty good value for $42, especially when you see what is on the menu and that you can spend all 4 hours there should you w...

We started 2007 with one of the warmest winters on record, not much snow and very mild. The plus to this was playing winter golf in Chicagoland, the downside being that we were looking forward to experiencing some "hard winters". Like the previous year, one of our sporting team were playing at the top of their sport. The Bears made the Superbowl, only to lose, but hey they made it right. We didn't know it at the time, but we were also on the way to our first child, conceived on or around Christmas day! In February the weather got colder, still not much snow, but the temperature was dropping so much sand was freezing! Oswego county in NY state was getting feet upon feet of snow, and we got a new car. The HHR, always intended to be Lorraine's car, in preparation for our baby producing efforts was an excellent find and an excellent deal. We knew we were expecting our baby, but hadn't told anyone yet, except the future grandparents. Late in March we went public, and ...

I don't know how one gets to the top of such lists, when there are soooo many sites out there on that world wide web thingy, but recently I have been seeing a lot of hits for three specific items.. 1. The Hippo Christmas Song 2. A Soldier's Silent Night 3. Slainte Mhath (Slancha Va) Nobody comes to see me anymore, it seems either AJ, or one of these top three items are the most popular!

The weather has been pretty wild over the last few weeks with some pretty big storms rolling through. One have had two ice storms, the first of which had all melted before I could get the camera out next day, it was crazy with my whole truck coated with ice, really wish I had some pictures! We had around 9" of snow in one storm, that was excellent and a lot of it is still around. The last week or so has been lots of freezing rain, sleet and snow, not much fun. This picture is from an ice storm we had at the weekend. Every branch, leave, bud and stick of every tree was coated in ice, it looks really cool. Not sure what else the season has in store for us, but hopefully more of the same, it's fun for us truck drivers. Lorraine's family will be in town for Christmas, so hopefully there will be a white Christmas.

Most of my UK friends will think this corny and most of my US friends will have either done it before, or will in their future. I am talking about the family Christmas card. In future, ours will be way more professional. I refuse to pay someone to do it, but I might try the old "green screen" approach, and get some compilation pictures going, but we will see. Anyways for now, here are some pictures from this year's shoot. Sorry they are a bit split up, but I filed them differently, so there are two links below. AJ & Reggie , Just Reggie

My friends who know me well, will also know that I love Christmas and specifically Christmas films and music (Charlie - remember A Country Christmas!) So when Lorraine got an email from a township an hour away to come and see their Christmas light show, set to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, I was there with bells on! Some of you may remember the guy who did this with his house a few years ago. Well they asked him to do this for their tree. I have a couple of videos below, that we shot in the freezing cold watching the results of his endeavours.

If you have been reading for a while you will know that AJ and bathtime didn't mix in the early days. Being my first, I still don't know if that was normal, or she was just fussy. It doesn't really matter now, because quite honestly she now loves the bath, and doesn't even mind water in her face..too much! As you can see, I have been playing with the Camcorder and shot some videos of her last night. AJ In The Bath : AJ& The Duck : AJ's Bathtime

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 ..

I know, shock and horror right, how dare I write a post that is not about AJ. Well of course, no post in my new life will be complete without at least a little AJ. This past weekend, we decided to take a little road trip, if you call 1000 miles in 4 days, with MIL, dog, baby and wife, little! We were hoping to take Jan (MIL) away, for her last weekend in the country until Christmas, on a trip to see the fall colours, although most common sense was telling us that they had already passed their best, and like common sense mostly is, it was true. Although that didn't stop us having fun. We took off early on Friday morning, well early by our new standards, around 8am, bound for Grand Haven, approximately a 4-5 hour drive according to the Tom Tom. Of course that doesn't factor in stopping for feeding every three hours, and that taking 30-45 minutes between, feeding, changing and burping, but enough about my personal habits! We stopped en-route at an outlet mall that had been recomme...

Almost a month old already, and thankfully we won't be much longer until we are through that first two months of yelling for no apparent reason, although some days she is great, eats, sleeps and sh**s on schedule. It has been a month of firsts.. Saw her Cubbies unceremoniously dumped out of the play offs by the Diamond Backs, who were treated with the same disdain by the Rockies..go Rockies! Hopefully she will see a few World Series with her dad over the next few years, especially with all the Cubs stuff she got, including an awesome hand made blanket by my friend Annie. She had her first public engagement, out to a party at her US godparents house, check out the pictures ; that's Jody feeding AJ. She was quite the picture in her little Osh Kosh hoodie. Daddy got very drunk (a whole bottle of Soco Charlie) and fortunately mummy was past the day for being able to drive again. She had her first sponge bath and yelled throughout, I hope she comes to like the bath time stuff, else...

No she isn't two yet, if she was we would have gotten a bit more sleep. The terrible twos I talk about is the start of her second week, where she went from a regular three hour feed/sleep regime, to hours of sleeping and eating followed by hours of screaming the house down for hours on end. Feeding her more, changing her, stripping her naked and redressing her (learnt that at class) rocking her, walking around, you name it, we did it. 3am until 6:30am one morning, and then midnight to 4am the next. No pattern, no rhyme, no reason. As you can see, Reggie is very impressed! There are a few more pictures here, keep checking them out. We went to the pediatrician this week for her second check up, and she has put on over a pound in a week, the little porker. She is already up to 9lb 1.5oz, and has grown to 20.5" Oh yeah, apparently the doctor says that she will "be fussy" for the next 6 weeks! Lorraine has gone into much more detail in her posts, over at her blog , hea...

The Cubs have gotta win today. Yes folks, it's crunch time. The Cubs have to win the next three games to keep our hopes alive. AJ, the Cubs youngest fan at only 7 days old by game time is supporting her team in style. I have also posted a few more pictures in her first week old folder. Click here to see some new ones. All together now, "Go Cubs Go, Go Cubs Go; Hey Chicago Whaddayasay Cubs Are Gonna Win Today!"

Now, you all be sure to tell me when you get bored of me talking about my beautiful new baby daughter! The first few days of life were pretty relaxed, some feeding, a lot of sleeping, recovering from the trauma of birth..we thought, this is a piece of cake, isn't she great! Condell even brought us a special celebratory dinner for two, steak, champagne, etc, on the evening before we checked out. We had lots of visitors, AJ's US god parents, friends and of course Nanny Jan. Towards the end of the second night, Addison still hadn't peed, a big no-no in new baby land. Apparently they are supposed to have one pee per day old, although I am not sure how long that rule applies, cos adults would spend all day on the toilet if it kept going! The doctor advised us to feed her formula on the 2nd night, to be sure she was getting enough food, and sure enough, about 3 hours later she wet her nappy. Great, I thought, not too much. So I started to change her, and forgot the cardinal rule....