I figured I'd better post here sooner than later. Or my legions of fans would disappear. OK, well, that's a bit of an overstatement.

What's new with A.J.? Since my life is so boring as to not be worthy of writing about here? ;)

He's sleeping better at night...waking himself up nicely to eat and then pretty much falling asleep. He's seven weeks old today. Just sayin'...

He's really active in the morning and then again in the evening, and I guess (since I work) he does a good job of sleeping in between feedings most of the day. He's discovered how to start sucking on his hands, but he hasn't gotten coordinated enough to single out the thumb just yet.

He's trying sooooooooo hard to talk to us. It's really cute and funny and so adorable at the same time. He really loves to try to talk to me, and I love it, since I don't get to do much "bonding" with him otherwise, especially given my travels. I'll talk to him, and then when he starts moving his mouth and making noises while intently focusing on me, I stop and "listen" and then respond to him in some verbal way, or by smiling. He is smiling more "on cue" nowadays too, but more for Gina than for me. It's so ridiculously cute. Now that he's starting to do more, I need to go out and get one of them pocket video cameras that has made Elena famous. :)

You can also see that he's gaining more and more range of vision. Today he was looking at the TV from his swing, which is a good 8-10 feet away. I'm sure he couldn't outright see what was there, but he was looking at it and "focusing" on it.

Otherwise, we're just trying hard to keep him stimulated and interacted with whenever he's awake and wanting attention. It's not easy to do that and to keep up with whatever else we're trying to do, but generally speaking, he does a great job of being on his own, for what it's worth, and keeping himself entertained at the moment. He's still a pretty laid-back baby, and that's great.

Beyond A.J., things are getting done around this house. Got a new water line put in, in the hopes that it will help alleviate some of our water-pressure issues. The jury's still out on that, but the job isn't complete yet either. I've also been doing a lot of work in the yard, both front and back. If you want to see everything going on, head on over to my houseblog, and you can read up on it. Or check out my Flickr page for the pics.

Wednesday, I head out of town for a week to Germany. Should be cool, but I'm kinda bummed to go and not be around for Gina and A.J. Really, I don't want to leave, but it has to be done, for work. And at least I can feel a little better knowing that it will probably kick much ass in the end. Otherwise, work has been really rough lately in terms of pressure from the top down. It's been hectic, as always, but at the same time, there have been some nice rewards. We've put out some good stuff in recent months, so I'm happy about that. Makes it worthwhile.

Last year, around this time, I was in Germany too. And while there, I heard this song for the first time, seeing it on German MTV. Maybe I'll find another freakin' awesome song while there. :)