life

We've had Matthew staying with us for over a week now, for summer vacation. When we picked him up he had two black eyes and a cut on his nose, apparently from jumping and falling on a bed four days before. It looked so terrible we took him to the doctor and had some x-rays done, but everything was fine. He has enjoyed telling everyone his story, of course, sometimes more embellished than at other times. ;)

Olivia has been interacting more and wakes up every morning smiling and talking. She loves her daddy, and sometimes will beam at him when he's holding her even if he's not paying her any attention. She also loves her bedtime baths -- no matter how grumpy she was before, she's happy as can be afterwords. She's still sleeping pretty well at night, although she had a few days and nights where she got completely off schedule (growth spurt, maybe?) and we're back to midnight bedtimes. She fusses a bit in the evenings and I'm not entirely sure why.

We're back home to stay. Mark is no longer working in Austin (except perhaps for a job here or there) and is working for Carl again.

And here's a few pictures from the past week:

This was after we came home from the prayer meeting. Olivia had been sitting so peacefully but by the time the camera came out she was becoming discontent.

This photo amuses me... That's Matthew's "say cheese" face, and Olivia is looking distressed and her hair is sticking up terribly. lol

No pictures of just Matthew... it is hard to get a picture of a two year old on the move, and if he poses you get the face seen above :P

brief update

Finally an update here! I know people were wanting some new pictures; sorry for the delay. :(
We're trying to get Olivia on a proper schedule. For a little while she thought it had to be 2:00 in the morning before it was bedtime, but we've worked it back to 11:00 so far. She sleeps at night for around 4-5 hours at a time. Last night she slept for 5 1/2 hours; however, I didn't get to sleep that long myself. I woke up after a few hours to hear the fire alarms for the apartment complex going off. I was home by myself (Mark was in Austin) and I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't smell any smoke but I didn't really want to get Olivia and walk around outside at 3:00am trying to figure out if there was a real danger or not! I finally just called 911, but they already had received some calls and they had a dispatcher on the way. I was so tired I went back to bed to just "lay awake" for a little bit, but I ended up waking up over an hour later when Olivia did. This morning the alarms went off briefly 3 more times, so I guess maybe they were just malfunctioning.

It's been extremely warm here lately! Last week there was a day in Austin where it was 105 degrees at six in the evening! Thankfully things seemed to have cooled down slightly -- it's been in the 90's for the past couple days. ;) It still seems like the air conditioner runs non-stop to keep home at a comfortable temperature.