I neglected to mention...let the record show that A.J.'s first visit to a public place (other than the hospital and the doctor's office) was Noodles & Co. Would have been Babies R Us, but Gina and I were hungry for lunch Sunday, so we stopped.

Of course, he's been cooped up in the house since. That, and he'll never remember it: He slept soundly through the entire Noodles experience. He tried to sleep through Babies R Us too, but the semi-bumpiness of the cart jostled him awake a few times.

I should add: car seats are great...they fit so nicely in those wooden restaurant high chairs and on the top of shopping carts. It's nice, because I don't have to wipe anything down or worry about him touching everything (at this age, anyway).

So it was good to get him out of the house...too bad he slept the entire trip, more or less.

Also, my friend Bill and Gina's friend Lisa had their baby last Thursday...Lily--and she was a big girl too: 8 lbs. 1 oz. and 23 inches or something like that. On my biz trip, my boss was asking if A.J. was the first baby among my friends, and I was like, "No, there have been a couple in most of the friend circles."

And then I realized that, although A.J. isn't the first baby, he is the first boy in both the NU "inner circle" of sorts (right?), and also among the next generation of my friends from the South Side.

Lucky him. :)

In a completely unrelated topic, my brother emails me last night: "I'm watching this show, Gangland on History channel and it's talking about a big gang in Chicago that basically ran drugs on [the corner I lived on] and it was the best money making corners in Humboldt Park. They even showed the building I think you lived in too. Way to pick a great neighborhood."

At least I can now say I lived somewhere historic. Granted, by the time I lived there, it was starting to become gentrified--although not quite there yet. Still was not the safest place to live. Also, now I know why Kazak tore a hole in the wall the one time...it wasn't the fireworks, it was to get to the drugs still hidden in the walls, probably. :)

OK, well, A.J. is better still...eating better, but still needing to be supplemented with formula. Also, he's definitely developing his sense of taste...he was originally fed the pre-mixed Similac Advanced in the hospital, and they sent some bottles of it home with us. That stuff smells intensely milky and sweet (cut it out, sickos). We went out and bought the powder form of Similac Advanced, and he was eating it fine for several days.

Then, he started to kind of just get disinterested in the formula. This puzzled me...it took me literally 30-45 minutes, with almost constant stimulation, to prevent him from falling asleep with the bottle in his mouth. Although, if I took it away and went to put him to bed, he'd get fidgety and wake up and start sucking the air and crying a bit. So he was hungry, but not interested. I deduced that maybe the powdered form of the Similac (which we WERE mixing properly) didn't taste good (or good enough) to him.

So we asked our lac specialist during our visit yesterday if we could take another couple bottles home of the premixed stuff. She said that was OK, and he's guzzled it down every time. Suffice to say, I went to buy some of it at Babies R Us on the way home from work. It's nice to be seemingly right. :) We'll see how long that lasts.

Hell, Gina's making a bit more progress (very slowly) in terms of milk production though, so maybe we won't even have to worry about formula soon. It'd save us some time and a lot of effort.

Hope you're all doing well!