People Are Starving Out There...

Ok, I've finally sat down a posted a new picture on the blog after a 2 week hiatus. Little did I realize the intense human suffering I would be inducing through my inattentiveness. Never fear, the camera's memory has finally been cleared and picture taking will resume as normal.

With respect to the hiatus, as one might imagine school is now going full-tilt here in sunny Indiana. I was just perusing the deadlines to submit my dissertation for a May graduation, and apparently April 22 is the magic day. In other words April 22 is the deadline to defend the dissertation. Thus, said dissertation needs to be done at a minimum 2 weeks prior to that date so my tender and loving committee members can begin gathering firewood for the pyre that they will proceed to roast me slowly over. Essentially it means that if I am indeed going to pull off the improbable May graduation, I have a mere 6.5 months to whip out a dissertation. Should be fun.

In other news, I've gotten around to scanning Olivia's first closeup in. As you can see below my next little girl is going to be a beautiful little gray blur.

Erin is feeling well and is recovering from her intense day of Texas summer heat. Nothing like a classic Houston summer day of 95 degrees and 90% humidity. I think she's liking the idea of Houghton, Michigan more and more. Otherwise, everything seems to be going fine with the next baby, apart from tiring Erin out. We have learned that Olivia responds well to loud noises: Erin and I went to the movies this past weekend and it seems that Olivia moved around quite a bit when the theater got loud. I got to feel my first flutter of Oliivia just last night; only 4 months to go.

Last and, of course, not least Madelyn is keeping her parents busy as usual. She's mastering the art of walking along the couch and picking blocks up and putting them into a rubbermaid bin as noisily as possible. She appears to really love her new day care; so much so that Erin tells me that as overjoyed as Madelyn is to see her at the end of the day she quickly turns around and tries to go back to the sitter. On another interesting note, Madelyn is being watched along with two little girls: the youngest is about 6 months and also named Madeline, and the older one is about 3 years old and named....Olivia. Who'da thunk it?