The Warners in individual glory.

And we're back. Sorry for the spotty news coverage. It's just we have three kids around here nowadays and stuff. It's not to hurricane level chaos, but it's definitely a little more challenging than the move to two. So we've been mostly sleeping and cleaning and feeding children and trying to make sure they all get checked on once a day instead of chronicling this special time in our lives. But today is the day we rectify the situation, and since it may be leap day again before we update again, this may be a long one. Hold on to your hats.

Let's start with the baby, because let's face it- babies are natural stars. Spencer has moved in and become firmly entrenched as man of the house. Sorry Jessie. He's fairly alert for a newborn, although he still mostly sleeps. Which is good, because when he's awake all he wants to do is eat. And eat. And eat. And he doesn't spit it all up like the girls did, so I have no idea where he stores it. Never fear though, he still creates as much laundry as the girls. He just pees on everything instead. He's a decent sleeper and fairly tolerant of being poked and prodded. And this completes his inventory of talents. We overlook the excessive night awakening and soiling of blankets and clothing because he is soft and cuddly and smells nice, and this covers a multitude of sins.

Kimberly has adjusted fairly well to being ousted as the baby. She loves Spencer and is in heaven when she gets to hold him or sit next to him. Unfortunately, she has no concept of the word gentle and likes to pound his head, shake his bouncer, and try to drag him around the house. She has also recently learned the word no, which makes it harder to temper this behavior. But she does it all in such an adorable manner that the local authorities are usually inclined to let her off with a warning. I got to spend some time with just her today while a neighbor corralled Madeline, and realized she never gets any one on one time since she's the only regular napper of our three urchins and has to share the spotlight in her waking hours. So we're working on remedying that oversight. She occasionally gets one on one time at 6 AM when she's the only one up, but I don't really count that as quality since my eyes are usually half closed and my brain is more than half shut down. She's learning to say all of the family's names and pretty much any other word you ask her to repeat, and other than that, she follows Madeline around all day mimicking her every move.

Speaking of our firstborn, she's still a handful and probably will be her entire life. She loves to hold the baby too, and although she can be trusted not to poke out his eyes or pull his hair, she occasionally tries to carry him around or bury him in a blanket cave. Madeline likes to hang out with Kimberly or her horde of imaginary friends, chief of which is "Monster", "Birdie", "Cat", and "Dog". They ride on her head to church, must be buckled in the car to go to the store, hide in her coat pockets, and frequently get chastised for being irreverent in family home evening. Madeline enjoys eating blueberry muffins, doing the same puzzles repeatedly, making up and being told stories about herself, and long walks on the beach.

Jessie is, to be frank, sick. Literally, not figuratively. We've all been passing around coughs and colds and he's the latest victim, so the poor fellow has been a little under the weather. But he continues to trudge to work every day and impress people, sit outside the bishop's office a lot, and maim himself playing basketball a couple of times a week.

I'm here, and alive, and figuring out this triple mothering business. The trick, I've discovered, is getting enough sleep, which is ridiculously easy with a newborn. Other than that, you just make sure everyone eats at least three times a day and has clothes that are clean, if not matching. Bonus points for getting everyone's hair done, vacuuming once in a while, and doing puzzles. Cake. I could do this with my eyes closed. And frequently do.

So, that's us for now. We're a bundle of excitement. If you like to sit around and chill a lot. Which we do.

The Boy You've All Been Waiting For

As promised, I am here to unveil the new addition, because I love you. Introducing:

Our little bundle of fun, Spencer Matthew Warner. Vital stats, so you can be in the know with celebrity gossip: 8 pounds, 3 ounces, born at 3:24 AM on February 16, 2012. 2/16/12. A plaindrome, incidentally, because Spencer is cool like that. We like him already. Except he's a punk. Normally I do not write birth stories, but I want to have a written narrative someday to embarrass Spencer in front of his girlfriends. We will attempt to keep things PG for the kids. But if words like epidural, dilate and adorable scare you, skip to the pictures at the end of the good-looking people I hang out with.

We could go into a lot of unnecessary detail of labor, but here's the gist: I had a doctor's appointment on Wednesday at which I was dilated to a 2. After the appointment, I had irregular contractions that came and went all day, which didn't alarm me because I've been contracting for three weeks with no birth story to show for it. So I ignored it. After we went to bed, the contractions kept going, so eventually I got up to time them. At which point they stopped completely, so I went back to bed. Twenty minutes later, I started getting contractions every two minutes, followed by a huge amount of bleeding, which caused me to freak out and wake up Jessie and demand we head to the hospital immediately. Because they know what to do with panicking hormonal women at the hospital. On the way to hospital, I all of a sudden started having extremely painful contractions extremely close together, and finally started to contemplate the theory that I was in labor. Upon arrival at the hospital, the nurses seemed remarkably less concerned about the bleeding than I was, and much more concerned about the fact that I was dilated to a 6. This seemed ridiculous to me, because obviously I had only been in labor about half an hour and there was no way I was that far along. But an hour and a half later, when Spencer was born, I was still trying to convince myself we were in labor. Talk about fast. I'm still a little shell shocked.

But, it's true, we're now a family of five. The girls were thrilled to wake up and discover their brother had decided to grace us with his presence. Madeline was especially thrilled to come see him, although she was worried about the hole in my stomach and was anxious to bring tape to fix it. She wanted to hold Spencer the whole time she was here, and alternated between calling him Spencer and Ali Baba. Kimberly really surprised me. She was neither jealous nor indifferent. She got really excited and said "Baby! Baby!" and even held him for a minute, looking very serious and grownup as she did so. Then she crawled into the bottom of a hospital cart and spilled my water cup. Jessie has been great. He's getting used to talking boy talk instead of girl talk. Spencer may get called a princess a few times before we're all on the same page.

Anyway, we're all adjusting and trying to get some sleep after a crazy night. We love our little guy, who thus far is pretty quiet and sleepy. I'll leave you with some pictures of the star of the day. Enjoy. Ooh and aww to your heart's content. Feel free to covet such an awesomely studly baby.

Did you miss me?

I'm back. You can exhale. There is still no baby around here. I know that if I leave you all alone for too long you'll start suspecting things and going crazy with curiosity and your whole lives become meaningless because you're on baby watch with absolutely nothing else to think about, and I hate to do that to you. (Or is that just me?) Anyway, rest assured that we would never leave you out of the loop for that long. Aside from family, friends, and other people we know, my virtual community is absolutely my top priority when dessiminating information. And let's not kid ourselves, there will be pictures and announcements all over Facebook within about 48.3 minutes of birth. So fear not.

But let's all step back and wander to other topics for a moment, celebrating the estrogen in our little family. My other kids have somehow managed to survive baby watch thus far with minimal damage to their self esteem and physical motor skills. In fact, today we took Kimberly to the doctor for a checkup and the doctor pronounced her fit for jury duty. She's really, really, really tall. Like 99th percentile. Doc said if she keeps up above the ninetieth percentile til age two, she's going to be a tall person. Poor Kimberly is going to curse her genetics when she's looking for guys over six feet to date and they're all making out with the five foot two girls. C'est la vie. She's also still skinny despite consuming more than me at most meals. So maybe that'll be a consolation prize in her teenage years. She's getting pretty talkative and just a little bit sassy like someone else we know (cough, cough, Madeline, cough) but she's still so dratted cute we can't bring ourselves to get rid of her.

Speaking of Madeline, she's a little person these days instead of a toddler, and it keeps freaking me out. She loves Primary and her friends, and is very into having boyfriends. I don't know why. Maybe it's the in thing among three year olds right now. She quit taking naps and instead likes to do puzzles while I'm passed out on the couch. She nods knowingly when I am thus reclined and says things like "You have a headache Mom?" or "You can play on the floor and bend over when Ali Baba comes. Ali Baba is taking longer." She's eager to hold her brother, but in the meantime is practicing her mothering skills on Kimberly, mostly by bossing her around, trying to send her to timeout, or trying to brush her hair or send her to bed. She has to have everything just so, and often gets a hysterical need to clean at bedtime or when it's time to walk out the door. She also manages to keep us enamored with her though, usually by saying I love you unprompted at opportune times that conveniently change our minds about sending her to boarding school.

Oh. And I guess I may have mentioned this in passing, but ye faithful will probably already know that Jessie has a new job now. He now works for a company called Lendio, which is fun to listen to Madeline say over and over. Attask was good to us, but it was time to move on, and now Jessie can go get into trouble elsewhere and wreak havoc upon unsuspecting victims.

So that's the lowdown on us. I'd update you all on me, but you know how that's going. Let's just leave it at: nine months pregnant. Hope you are all having a grand February. Please don't take my blogging silence personally. Top secret and sensitive information and undercover missions and all that. You understand.