In honor of Mother's Day...the kids.

Welcome back to the mad house. The kids alternate between running me ragged and making life amazing, so we're staying busy enough. In honor of Mother's Day, which was appropriately celebrated with extra sleep and treats, let us indulge the mother in me and check in on the little munchkins and their latest award winning escapades.

Spencer is three months today, although we didn't have any cake, so I'll probably convince him to stay two months for a while to compensate. At the risk of totally screwing myself, I will admit that he is a dream. He sleeps anywhere from 8-11 hours a night, usually more on the 10-11 hour end, and therefore is my favorite child. He's getting more vocal about not being alone and responds to attention by hyperventilating. Clearly he needs to be adored by the public, and you'll see him on some reality television very soon. He is also laughing a lot, which is quite the drug high for my mama brain, so I spend a lot of time acting like a loon to get my fix. Madeline enjoys it too, but Spencer tends to clam up when she grabs his face and demands he laugh. I don't know why.

Kimberly has taken another one of those inexplicable leaps forward where she wakes up ten years older and I don't know how it happened. She weathered her second ear infection last week and takes her medicine with enthusiasm. She enjoys waking up at six in the morning and climbing into bed with Mom and Dad in order to make sure we don't sleep through our alarm, because she is thoughtful. Mostly she talks to Jessie and kicks me, which shows you how much gratitude I get for giving her life. Kimberly also enjoys sneaking suckers and Warheads out of the pantry, although the joke was on her with the Warheads. Hee hee. She talks a lot, mostly to Daddy on her play phone, and pretty much just spends all day hanging on the outskirts of the chaos picking up whatever food, treats and toys she can scavenge. She loves the new stroller I got for Mother's Day and spends a lot of time begging to sit in it. Happy Mother's Day to Kimberly.

Madeline continues to be the most interactive, the funnest, and the most exasperating of our children. Hazards of the firstborn. She has memorized the first two Articles of Faith and likes to bear her testimony in church. She is convinced one of the men in our ward is President Monson, but amazingly, this does little to convince her to be reverent in sacrament meeting. She pretty much spends all day either playing with friends outside, or with nose pressed up against the windows begging to be outside with her friends. I think she has a more active social life than I did in high school. Although that may not be saying much. Madeline loves to throw tantrums and whine, and then tell Dad how good she was all day. She has about 389 best friends. You are probably one of them. Congratulations. She spends a lot of time pretending, which is adorable, unless she is pretending to listen. She also spends a lot of time loudly referring to people as "that old man" or "that old lady", whether they look 20 or 90. They are always uniformly flattered and amused. She also likes to ask loudly about the baby in people's tummies, which also makes us a lot of friends.

Jessie was good to me for Mother's Day, and as I mentioned, I got to sleep in several times, try out my new stroller, go out for dinner, and hear how impressed Jessie was that I don't turn into a homicidal maniac listening to all the whining and crying all day every day. So nice to be appreciated for my accomplishments. Good weekend with my little family, living motherhood in all its bittersweet and wonderful glory. Hope you all enjoyed it too.