I think she has a death wish.

Madeline is kind of determined not to make it to her second birthday. She's had more near death experiences and trauma the past week than the past six months combined. It started when we went to Jessie's mission reunion. She was having a blast running around on the stage with all the other kids, and my biggest worry was that she would go exploring the church and find a hidden tunnel to the parking lot. Turns out I should have been more worried about her hidden aspirations to fly. She suddenly jumped off the stage and face planted onto the wooden floor. Jessie had seen the mischief in her eyes and ran to catch her, but arrived three seconds too late. But just in time, it turns out, to donate his best dress shirt as a rag for the torrent of blood gushing out her mouth. Now isn't that love? Anyway, after mopping up some of the carnage, we decided there was no chipped teeth, but she definitely bit her lip open in at least four places and bruised her upper gum quite badly. She was thoroughly traumatized, we all caused quite the scene, and it was a great night.

Madeline's lip is starting to not look like a scene from a horror film, but she has continued to be inexplicably clumsy. She randomly slid out of her booster seat at dinner, banged her head on the table, and sprawled onto the floor. She keeps running into tables, doors, and other hard objects. She banged her head on her crib while napping today, which she has never done before. She's reached new highs in tripping and falling. And I keep banging her with my elbow whenever I turn around suddenly. She jumps suddenly from stairs instead of walking down them normally. Did I mention she's also had a snot-nosed-hacking-cough-cold again through all this madness? Basically, I'm just counting our blessings that we haven't been to the ER yet, and counting the days until her birthday. At which point we'll hope the older and wiser thing kicks in pretty quickly. Heaven help us until then.

The stuff we did that was more important than the other stuff we didn't do.

Hey, I am a blogging slacker again. Surprise. In my defense we have been really busy doing real stuff. Instead of the fake stuff we usually do. Jessie's been hard at work at his new job, and Madeline and I have been hard at work pretending to be hard at work. And then we went to a wedding. My cousin got married on Friday so Madeline and I trekked to Logan for the festivities, and Jessie came up later to also be cool. It was actually the first temple wedding I have attended (minus one or two sealings of previously married people), so that was a good experience. And Madeline got to touch the temple, which made her day, because there is nothing we love more than temples. (Seriously, yesterday we just sat and looked through pictures of temples on lds.org and Madeline had a blast. I'd click to the next one and she's pointing and jumping- look Mom! A temple! Woah! And another temple! And the next one is a temple too! And she was still shocked when the next one was...a temple! We looked at about 60 temples before she got tired of it.)

So a good time was had by all at the temple, and the wedding breakfast, and the reception. Which I am obligated to blog about, because my Aunt Wendy was a little nervous hanging out with me. She kept saying, "You're going to blog about this, aren't you? I just know this is going to be in your blog." So here I am, Aunt Wendy, blogging about you. And that emabarrassing thing you did. And that other thing. No, but seriously, my Aunt Wendy is a cool person, so maybe we'll devote an entire blog to her one day.

Jessie came up for the reception, and we didn't want to drive back late, so we stayed overnight with my grandma. But first we got pulled over by the Smithfield police. Which Jessie was really excited about- so much so that he had to turn around and drive through Smithfield again because he thought it would be cool if they pulled us over again. I wish I was kidding about that. (Well, we actually turned around because I had to go back to Richmond and give my grandmother her car keys, but he really was excited at the prospect of getting pulled over twice.) You can all rest easy though, because it was just a fix-it ticket, so no fines were levied and no resisting arrest ensued. Jessie basically relies on fix-it tickets to tell us when to change our tailights. He's maybe gotten quite a few, but if I told you how many he might get angry.

So anyway, sweet partying times at the Warner house. We also had a baby shower and some old friends for dinner, and home teaching and playing horsie, so it was a pretty jam packed weekend. Good times.

A little basketball and an embarrassing moment.

So, I guess I'm a bit late, but I need to achknowledge that March Madness has been amazingly fulfilling this year. My bracket has taken some serious blows, but since that's because a lot of lower seeded teams have been awesome. I always love an underdog. Of all the upsets, obviously Kansas was my favorite. But I'm pretty stoked about Cornell too, since I called their victories.

Anyway. Since every post this week has pretty much been basketball, let's insert a story about Cami and Jessie and their silliness and embarrassing moments. This weekend was our stake conference, and my brothers offered to watch Madeline so we could go to the sdult session Saturday night. (Okay. I coerced them. With bribes of basketball on a big screen television.) So we got all ready to go and headed off to our meeting- a touch late, naturally, because of the Kansas game. So we were hustling, trying to make it on time, and we kind of ran into the chapel. And I'm thinking that it's a little weird there's not a flood of late people coming in with us, because Mormon standard time would dictate we would be in good company. We got about fifteen feet into the chapel when I realized the chapel was entirely full of men. And the stake president was speaking. So I froze and dragged Jessie back out into the hall. Turns out we thought the meeting was at six when it was really at seven, and we had just crashed the last few minutes of priesthood leadership. Awkward. And caused an awesome distraction in those last few serious minutes of the meeting- you know, when the stake president is bearing his testimony and the spirit is strong and hte only way it could get better is if two univited people come waltzing through the chapel, followed by a hasty retreat. Sometimes we are awesome.

In which I use insurance and easy in the same sentence.

I hate to interfere with the beauty of March Madness and post about anything else. But I had to report one of the craziest experiences of my life. due to Jessie's new job, we need to cancel a bunch of old insurance policies. And I've been dreading it because I hate dealing with insurance. I've ranted about it more than a few times, I think. I figured it would be painful and require a bunch of annoying paperwork. But while I was on the website for my health insurance, looking up the customer service number, I saw a link for Live Help. And I figured maybe that would save me a little time, because all I wanted to know is what letters I had to send and when I could officially cancel. So I started chatting with this insurance agent, and in less than five minutes, my insurance was cancelled. No paperwork, no sitting on hold, no hassle whatsoever. And I sat and watched television while I did it. And I didn't have to call someone, which we all know makes me kind of hyperventilate (despite working two years as a professional telephone operator.) So so so so easy. I was kind of in shock. But I liked it.

(Okay. I couldn't let the whole post pass without stating that I am loving March Madness. When I'm not dying of stress and suspense. The Florida/BYU game nearly killed me. About twenty times. Jimmer Fredette was this close to being lynched. But I'm loving it. Best month ever.)

Welcome to March Madness!

It's that time of year again. If you don't know what time of year that is...shame on you. We must not be real life friends. So, to enlighten you, it's time for the best sports season of the year. March Madness kicks off tomorrow, and my goal is to indoctrinate Madeline so she will love basketball and let me watch all the games instead of Curious George or Mary Poppins. I finalized my bracket tonight, and I'm pretty satisfied with the results. At least, I'm fairly certain my entire final four won't be toast three rounds in, which is pretty much what happened last year. There's a lot of pride and glory on the line in our annual Lundstrom family pool, and I'm hoping to redeem myself. I haven't performed well since my sophomore year of college. But that's the beauty of March Madness- there's always next year. So if you need me, I'll be spending some quality sports bonding time with my daughter.

The Shoe Problem

Madeline has a shoe problem. She changes her shoes every five minutes. There are a few rules: She can only wear matching shoes when we are leaving the house. Shoes on the wrong feet are better than shoes on the right feet. Shoes that are too small are best. Anytime she cannot get a shoe onto her foot in less than half a second, because said shoe is too small or on the wrong foot, she screams loudly. The death screams she usually saves for when she is stuck in a small place or has pinched her finger in a door. (I guess she figured out that these get my attention a lot faster.) Yesterday we had three full fledged meltdowns over shoes, where Madeline was sobbing like I'd cancelled Christmas and then torn apart her doll. I've decided that one more day of this may force me to gather all of Madeline's shoes in a garbage bag and leave them on my sister's porch, returning them to whence they came.

Jessie's big news.

So I've been not mentioning this for the past two weeks, so as not to jinx it, but prepare yourselves for awesome news: Jessie is getting a new job! Today is his last day at his current job, and on Monday he starts at a company called @task (pronounced at task. Confusing, eh?). His last job was pretty good to him, and he did good work, but it was time for a change. His official title at the new job will be Corporate Marketing Specialist. Which sounds cooler than Stay At Home Mom, but I still contend I have the more awesome job. Because I can take naps and my boss sings Mary Poppins to me and gives me hugs when I'm feeling sad. Take that, Jessie.

Anyway, we're pretty excited for the change and grateful there was an opportunity for Jessie to find a job with a little more room for growth, even though the job market isn't great. You can't complain when some people are struggling to find one decent job, so at the risk of sounding much too mushy and serious for this blog, we feel very blessed. And as a bonus, Jessie gets to come home early today and help Madeline and I get over our cabin fever (sickness having kept us from going anywhere or doing anything for a week, and we're itching to go cow-tipping or something.)Can you say family date night?