Why the kitchen is my favorite room today.

Today, while I was preparing dinner, I looked around at my rather...well, to be kind, let's just say lived-in kitchen. And as I looked around, I realized that even in her absence, you'd have no trouble figuring out that a little girl inhabits this place.

I'm not talking about the obvious tip-offs, like the pictures on the wall, or the play kitchen in the corner. No, my favorite signs are a bit more subtle. Like the traces of pink nail polish on the baseboards. The Disney princess boots sitting in the window. The stray sock under the blinds. The dried cereal and ramen noodles under one chair at the table. And if you happen to open the refrigerator, you'll see a plastic doll's bottle of milk carefully lined up next to a sippy cup of the same. The cuteness of which will hopefully distract you from the stick of butter that's been attacked by a butter knife or the string cheese that's been bitten in five places through the wrapping. And if you're really lucky, if you open the cupboard next to the fridge, you might find the little mischief maker herself, in all her sticky, smiley, guilty glory.

They told me to treasure moments like this, because they're gone all too soon. So I write about it and document it in hopes that it will make me smile instead of scowl. And what do you know, it really works. Until Madeline interrupts to show me the stack of papers she's pulled off the counter and scattered all over the kitchen floor. But even then, I'm grinning just a little bit.

You've been Jimmered!

So I was giving a ride to my ten year old brother, taking him to the church where my dad is reffing some Young Men's basketball games, when we had this delightful little conversation. Background information: my dad and I had just a lengthy conversation about Jimmer Fredette and the whole letter to the editor "idol" controversy. My dad expressed his frustration at people who shout "Go Jimmer!" whenever anyone ever makes a basket at church games. Also, my brother is a huge BYU fan and plans to attend there someday. Also keep in mind that he is ten, so he is completely earnest throughout this conversation. No trace of sarcasm.

Me: So, do you like Jimmer? Or do you think people talk about him too much!

Brother: Who's Jimmer?

Me: He's BYU's star basketball player.

Brother: WOO! I LOVE JIMMER! YEAH! (pause) I thought he retired.

Me: No. He plays for BYU. He's really good. Hey, you know what? Dad would really think it was awesome if every time someone scored at the game tonight, you yelled "GO JIMMER!"

Brother: He would?

Me: Yeah. He'd think it was totally funny.

Brother: (after some deliberation)...No, I don't think I'm going to do that. I'll probably get in trouble.

Me: No, Dad would love it! You should do it!

Brother: No. I think I probably won't. Because everyone else there is Utes fans.

Me: That's why you should do it! Don't you want to make your team proud?

Brother: I don't want to make a fool of myself.

Me: No, see, what you should do is stand up in the middle of all the Ute fans and yell, "Jimmer is my idol!"

Brother: (thinks about it for a minute, and then says in a confused voice:) But I don't worship idols.

Me: (Laughing really hard): Ah, [Brother]. You are wise beyond your years.

Brother: I'm wise behind my ears?

Me: (laughing harder.)

Brother: Oh, I get it. Because my brain is behind my ears. So that's where I'm wise.

Because I don't think it's possible to avoid this subject for the next ten years

So I vowed not to ever blog in detail about potty training. Because no one wants to hear about that. But unfortunately I am about to do just that. You've been warned. In my defense, when that's all you're trying to get your kid to think about all day, it starts to be all you're thinking about too.

Madeline has been rather fickle about potty training, We've been trying off and on for the past year to gauge her interest and jump on any enthusiasm for the project. She usually gets excited about it for a day or two, sits on the toilet a lot for a few days, has one or two successes, and then loses interest. I try to force her to keep going for a few days, and then lose patience and decide to give her a few weeks breather and try again later. Repeat every month.

Jessie has been rather excited about the project. No doubt if he was the one home all day with her, she'd have been fully potty trained three months ago through sheer force of will. Unfortunately he has this job he has to go to, so he comes up with these briliiant plans and leaves me to instigate them. So far we have tried sticker charts, presents when she succeeds, picking out and wearing princess panties, and denying her access to the iPad unless she uses the bathroom. She lost interest in the stickers and cries if we don't pick the right one or if we don't put it on her shirt. She got two presents and then lost interest in that. She liked wearing panties and gathered enough of the idea to go to the same spot in the kitchen to do her business. Then she asked for new panties, until we ran out. We thought the iPad would do it but she's been on strike and decided sitting on the toilet wasn't worth the privilege.

We've kind of been at an impasse. The today, after listening to the entire Rapunzal CD for the hundreth time this week (Thanks Grandma! I'm getting your son a bb gun for Valentine's day!), I decided to get rid of it permanently, using my daughter's own stubborness against her. I told her that we could only listen to Tangled if she was sitting on the potty. Then I prepared to put the cd on top of the fridge with the iPod and her pile of presents.

Surprise. She's been sitting on the potty for over half an hour singing "i've Got a Dream" and yelling "What's going to happen to the princess?!". And somehow even though this is supposed to be a victory for me, I feel like I've been duped.

Someday, ther will be no more potty training. And I'm going to buy myself some presents and give myself a whole booklet of stickers to celebrate.

Things that make my head hurt.

So when I say I have midwinter blah headaches, I wasn't kidding. They invite themselves over every day. And thus my blog suffers. (See. I always have the best excuses. I should win some sort of contest.) And also suffering is the cleanliness of my house, the entertainment of my children, and my sanity. Also Jessie. But we don't have to worry about him because he's resourceful and he'll land on his feet. After a month of these lovely headaches, I was feeling a little bit like chopping off my own head and replacing it with a pumpkin. Instead I went to the doctor, because let's face it, no one has ever successfully replaced their head with a pumpkin, Ichabod Crane notwithstanding. The doctor was very helpful. He told me I had tension headaches. Thank you, doctor for enlightening me. I knew that much from google, because I am not a helpless fool on the Internet. Also I am a hypocondriac, so webMD is my friend. The doctor figures the headaches are from lack of sleep and neck pain from breastfeeding. So as soon as I have no children it should clear right up. In the meantime, I have doctor's permission to be perpetually drugged up and high on caffeine. So we are going to party like it's 1999 around here and see how addicted we can get to various substances.

But enough about me. Let's talk about crazy people. So I created a facebook event to let our families know about our upcoming baby blessing. And I left it public in case I forgot any family members, so they could see when and where and all that jazz. Then I went to check the guest list, to see who all was coming, and all these people had RSVPed. Random people I didn't know. Mostly friends of family members I invited. And I thought to myself, who are these crazy people? I know facebook isn't the most formal avenue to issue invitations, but isn't there still some basic etiquette? Like, don't invite yourself to the random baby blessings of people you don't know? Fortunately, most of them said they couldn't make it. Thank you, random stalker friend of friends. I'm pleased you saw fit to be polite enough to tell me you won't be able to make it, since I was definitely counting on your presence. Does it give you a sense of importance to RSVP to as many random events on Facebook as possible? Does it make you feel popular and your social calendar fuller? Of course, one or two of these people I don't know said they might be there. I'm curious to see if they show up. Because that would be a great story to tell at parties. Needless to say, I changed my privacy settings. Because you can only find so much humor in creepy Internet stalkers who don't follow the unwritten rules of internet stalking. Cardinal rule number one: stay under the radar.

A night off.

So life here is still going. In case, like my mother, you get worried when you don't hear from me. Speaking of my mother, Tonight I manipulated my mother into taking Madeline for a sleepover. Or maybe she begged me to let her come. Either way, we both love Madeline to pieces and we routinely fight over who gets to get up with her at six in the morning, and drat, this time my mother won. So Jessie and I are enjoying a quiet night pretending we only have one child. Not something I'd choose to do every night, but for one Friday it's a pretty good gig. And it helps that Madeline loves hanging out at Grandma's, so we know she won't suffer for attention.

So other than that, there's not much to report in the Warner household, because we've kind of been lying low and doing the same thing every day, due to excessive mid winter blah headaches. Except Wednesday. Because Jessie got bored, having no Elder's Quorum meet ins this week, and decided he wanted to dye my hair. That is why I love the man. So now I'm a redhead. Or purplish in the right light. Awesome. So that's what we've been doing for entertainment. We'l let you know if we decide to do Jessie's next.

All About Kimberly

May we take a moment to step back and achkowledge the fact that I didn't go a week between blog posts? No applause please, just throw money.

Anyway. In case someday, my children decide to kill a rainy Saturday reading old blog posts, I don't want to be accused of favoritism. And let's face it, I just want to share all the intimate details about my baby like when she poops and how much she eats and how long her fingernails are. So let us commence the blogpost dedicated to that star of our household: Kimberly Leona Warner!

The poor girl had her two month dictor's appointment, and it turns out she's my little chunk, weighing in at 12 pounds 9 ounces. Two and half pounds more than her sister at the same age, despite starting out smaller. Hooray for chubby babies! She falls in the 90th percentile for height and weight. So much for my tiny newborn. Unfortunately, she does not like vaccines. About four hours after receiving the shots, she melted into a screaming ball of insanity. Madeline levels of loud death screams from my normally happy and chill offspring. Large doses of Tylonel have calmed her to manageable proportions, but she still lets you know she's sore if you move her legs at all. So we're having a fun day.

But let's talk about how Kimberly is when she's not building up immunity to serious diseases. She's a bundle of fun now, smiling at anybody who'll give her the time of day. The girl loves attention and has a grin that has roughly the same effect on my brain as cocaine. (No really. I read a study that says it's true.) she doesn't like tummy time, but what baby does like having their face shoved into the floor? She eats well and naps well as long as she's away from Madeline. (Although she got her revenge today with her vaccine induced tantrum and woke Madeline up for a change. I knew Maddie would get her comeuppance someday.) She's become quite the talker and tells us crazy stories, making me really excited to hear her explanations for being late for curfew in fifteen years. She's usually at her cutest at four in the morning when I'm trying to get her back to bed, and routinely keeps me up longer than I was planning on, enjoying the cocaine high. Of course, I always regret this at 6:30 when morning comes knocking on my eyelids, but that doesn't kep me from making the same mistake the next night. Darned baby smiles.

So that's Kimberly in a nutshell. We're pretty glad she hangs out with us all the day. If you don't have a Kimberly, we recommend them highly. But you have to get your own. This one is taken.

All about Madeline

Hello world. I've decided it's time for a very Mormon post describing the ridiculously funny things my two year old says, does, or believes. Or maybe the mildly funny things. Basically, this is what Jessie and I do for entertainment, so naturally we can't imagine that anyone else wouldn't want a dose of Madeline in their lives. Feel free to disagree. Quietly where we can't hear you.

Basically, Madeline has strange ideas about the world, and when you say something to her once, you'd better be prepared to hear it for the rest of time. My favorite was when we were at my mother-in-law's and Madeline was trying to play with her dog (whose name is Misty, but she calls her Kiss-me. I love that.). Misty wasn't cooperating, so Madeline said, very loudly and very angrily, "Listen to ME Kiss-me! One-two-three TIMEOUT! Listen to ME! NO! NO! DON'T!" The tone of her voice floored me, because it was like listening to a recording. Whoops. Time to work on those parenting skills if I'm going to get tattled on in front of Grandma. We might be making progress, because she still routinely sends her dolls and toys to timeout, but she asks them nicely. Most of the time.

Madeline has also come up with a unique way of dealing with her anxieties. Jessie told her once there was "no reason to be scared" of the dark, and she's latched onto that phrase like a piranha. She talks to herself as she's going to bed and says, "No reason to be scared of the dark. Leave all the lights on? No reason to be scared." There's also no reason to be scared of the neighbor's drums, other loud noises, and scary moments in movies.

Madeline got a dollhouse for Christmas, and she's in love. We like it too, because it gives us a pretty good glimpse into the Mind of Madeline, which is an interesting and sometimes bizarre place. Her dolls do everything we do, including going to bed, making all the meals, driving to work, playing horsey on Daddy's back, dancing with, kissing and hugging one another, and so on. The best is when she shoves the mommy out the second story window, and then the daddy comes running and assists her back into the house via the door to "get better". So she can push her out the window again. Nice to know she has respect for motherly figures.

Madeline has also rekindled her love affair with Mary Poppins, who is now known as Peter Poppins for reasons unknown. Her new favorite part of the movie is when the bank manager takes Micheal's tuppence and causes a riot. She likes to get the chips out of our Sequence game and run around with them saying "My money! Don't take my money! Give me back my money!"

Well, that's a decent sampling of what it's like to live with Madeline. Minus the incessant Toy Story talk and lack of any interest in potty training. And now you'll have to excuse me to take a nap. Because Madeline was up from 4-5:30 last night turning the hall lights on and off in order to look at the glowing stars on her ceiling. Don't you wish she was your kid? (No really. Don't you? Because I'm renting her out from 8 pm to 7 am. Reasonable rates.)