The post Christmas lull

Hello world, are you alive? Glad to hear you survived the Christmas holidays. We did too. Mostly. Christmas Day was awesome, but Christmas Eve night was even better because Madeline decided to be awake for most of it. In desperation we let her sleep in our bed for the first time since she was counting her age in months. In return for this generous gesture, she kicked us a lot. So no one got much sleep. Well, Kimberly did. So she woke us up at like 5:30. Silly girls. But other than the lack of sleep, Christmas was great. The girls got everything they wanted and a lot of things they didn't know they wanted. Kimberly was super excited and just bounced up and down for an hour going "wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow!" Madeline kept trying to open all the gifts she bought for other people because she thought they were for her. Jessie finally got to open his belt, and for good measure, contracted an awesome cold. Good times were had by all.

Because we were all sick and tired this week, we decided it was a good time to turn the girls world upside down and traumatize them, so we switched them into new beds. Actually, we've planning to do this for a while because I knew both girls were getting new bed sets and so we set Christmas as the deadline. Otherwise I'd still be procrastinating it in a year and poor Ali Baba would be sleeping in a bassinet until he was three. Surprisingly, they have handled the transition well, and Madeline is now in a twin bed and Kimberly is in a toddler bed. I thought Madeline would start a mutiny at any disruption in her routine and that moving a thirteen month old into a bed would result in a lot of escaping, but neither doomsday scenario came to pass, and both girls have been sleeping better than they have in weeks. Go figure. The next step is moving them into the same room, but I feel leery that our good luck can continue, so Jessie will be engineering that adventure. I'm just in charge of manufacturing a baby for the now vacant crib. Lucky me.

Well, we'll leave you with that until our highly anticipated New Year's post, for which I have to think of some new year's goals. I'm thinking lose twenty pounds by the end of February. And/or get more sleep. Too ambitious? Yeah, I thought so too.

Merry Christmas, and to all, some more sleep

Merry Christmas everybody. I know, I'm a bit early, but let's face it: I'm in no way going to blog on Christmas. Or even tomorrow. So you all get your bit of Christmas cheer now. We've been done with the shopping and baking (ha! baking! we're pretending there was some of that going on this year) and all the decorating and whatnot for a while now, because I didn't want to fight crowds or be stressed or forget anything. Only now it's two days until Christmas and we have nothing we need to do, which feels a little weird, and a little stressful, and I'm almost tempted to go get something meaningless from the store just to fight crowds and feel like I'm being productive. The house is mostly clean, thanks to a couple Christmas parties I was forced to clean for, the presents are wrapped, and the kids are sufficiently cranky and sleep deprived to guarantee barrels of fun. It's okay, because it's giving me lots of practice waiting impatiently for something to happen which I'm sure will come in handy in February.

We are excited for Christmas though. I'm ridiculously excited about the presents we have for the girls, and I hope they get excited too. Kimberly has gotten some practice opening presents so I think she has the idea this year, as long as she's opening someone else's present before the actual day. Madeline, of course, gets it completely, and knows exactly which presents under the tree are for her, how many chains she has to take off before Christmas morning, and how many chocolates she is allowed to consume every day. The only thing she doesn't get is the idea of a secret. Two seconds after we wrapped Jessie's gift she was yelling across the house, "Daddy! We have a secret surprise belt present for you! It's a surprise! It might be a belt...?" So I'm glad I didn't let her help wrap many presents. All of our ornaments are on the top half of our tree because Kimberly has a problem staying away from shiny round objects. And our Christmas lights get turned on and off twenty times a day, so if you drive by our house, we're not signaling for help with Morse code. Just celebrating, the Warner way. Hope you all have such a Merry Christmas. I wouldn't have it any other way. Well, I wouldn't say no to having the holiday involve a little more sleep. But other than that. Just perfect.

This too is supposed to pass.

So I realized I spelled adios incorrectly in my last post. It's been bothering me for a week, but not enough to go fix it. Embarrassing. I crave your forgiveness for not being a native Spanish speaker. A poor excuse, but there you go.

I know you missed us. Don't mind my long absence. We were just celebrating our monthly week of sickness. This time it was stomach flu. The joy and excitement we experienced were abundant. The girls got it first, and then myself, and then Jessie. Odds are pretty good you've had the pleasure of making its acquaintance recently if you live near us, so there's no need to explain all the fun details. But at our house it was a nasty bugger that put you in constant misery for about 6-8 hours and then left you wiped out for a day or so are that. Good times. Anyway, that's pretty much dominated our week and left little time and motivation for fun things like blogging, cleaning the house, or living. We did, however, manage to pull off a family white elephant party in the aftermath, which was fun, and included such gems as a pet rock and a shave and play Barbie. You are totally jealous right now.

Before/during/after the stomach flu, we had anther fun plague called Attack of the Tantrum, which mostly involved Madeline losing all sense of reason, independence, and sanity. Temper tantrums over everything, waking up twelve times a night to throw more temper tantrums, tears and hitting and defiance, needing help and supervision for every menial task and activity, and did I mention the tantrums? Our house is a little short on sleep, patience, sanity, and peanut butter. One of those is not Madeline's fault. As for the rest, we're at wit's end on how to restore our child to the rambunctious but lovable and manageable child she once was. We're guessing it has something to do with her father and insecurity about her status as queen of the world, but we'll let you know when Freud gives us a definitive diagnosis. In the meantime, pray for our eardrums and our neighbor's eardrums.

I throw my hands up in the air sometimes.

Hey ho. I feel like it's time for an update on life, but there's also nothing really specifically important I have to say either. We've been busy, but most of it is non-blog material. I know, I blog about pregnancy and potty training, so my readers must have strong constitutions. But even I have my limits, and I feel our secret practices to join the Russian tightrope specialists are best left out of the public eye. I don't want to disappoint though, so let's see what Warner hijinks we can release to the press, shall we?

Madeline continues to be a delight, in that she alternates between making me laugh hysterically and testing my patience to the utmost limit. She has become master in procrastination, and is finally starting to skip naps regularly. At the most opportune time, as per her history, because just as she's eliminating one nap a day, I'm looking into adding a few, and this results in a real scheduling conflict. In her defense, it can't be easy getting stuck in the house a lot because your mother's energy levels are about on par with a sloth. We're exploring new realms of mother daughter fighting, bonding, and sumo wrestling. All in good fun.

Kimberly has decided to be grown up. I routinely forget that she barely turned one, because she wants to do everything Madeline and I do and is pretty good at most of it. She still only says a few words, but she repeats a lot of sounds and tones and makes herself understood pretty well. She runs, climbs, wrestles, gets her own snacks from the pantry just like her sister, and pretty much rules the roost. Either I've forgotten what Madeline knew at that age, or it's true that the second child benefits from an older sibling's example, because she just constantly amazes me with what she understands and can do. I'm thinking of selling her to the circus.

Anyway, there's some crumbs for you. We'll just be hanging around, waiting for Christmas and attempting to better ourselves with fine literature and gourmet ice cream. Audios.

It's still November, not December. In case you were confused.

Hey all. Happy holidays. We've just been enjoying the days off and eating too much. We got out our Christmas decorations Friday morning, and the girls had a merry time decking the tree. Madeline put all the ornaments on one low laying branch and Kimberly threw colored balls around the front room. It was very festive. Jessie did step in and redistribute the decorations a little more equitably so our tree wasn't so lop-sided. We also did a little Black Friday shopping, which consisted of waiting until all the crazy people had gone home to sleep and going to one store at three in the afternoon to buy a bunch of non-sale items. Perfect shopping trip. I detest early mornings and mobs, so this is how we roll, and we love it.

I also had Jessie take another documentary picture, although the scenery is now season appropriate, because we take time to make this a merry exercise just for you.

This is me just shy of 29 weeks. Apparently I alternate between looking and feeling nine months pregnant and still just looking fat, which is awesome. I have started getting some comments from strangers in public, so I like to think I'm justified in my griping to Jessie everyday about how awkwardly large I feel. A magical transformation occurred about two to three weeks ago and I became acutely aware that I'm in the final third. I am now complaining of leg and hip pain to Jessie, going to extremes to avoid bending over, getting full much too quickly and hungry again even more quickly, and other fun third trimester things. I'm also getting kicked a lot more frequently, which is good and bad. It's never too painful because I'm pretty sure the placenta is in front blocking most the force. Or this boy is just a wimp who's going to get walloped by his sisters. Probably. But there's still a lot of good time I can almost forget I'm pregnant, so we don't have to surrender to despair and woe just yet. The holidays should still be pretty comfortable. I don't feel any rush to get anything done before a baby comes, because we have the basics (crib, onesies, diapers, car seat) and figure anything else can wait. After all, it really doesn't take much to keep a baby alive. Just some milk and a pen to contain your other children. So we're just going to chill the next few months, endlessly praise Jessie for picking up the slack on the housework, and be blissfully ignorant of any coming responsibility. I love this plan.

You and Me Baby, We're Stuck Like Glue

So I've been feeling pretty lame the last few days. Every year, I show my love for my dear husband on our anniversary by writing a heartfelt, exceedingly awesome, sometimes tongue in cheek post for our special day. It is definitely his favorite part of the occasion. He hates getaways, dates, presents, kisses, and all that stuff, but give him a good blog post and the romance is alive. Unfortunately, I am late this year. I hang my head in shame. I offer up as excuse croup and advanced pregnancy. We did celebrate on our actual anniversary, croup and all (thanks mom, for staying up all night with my sick kid! You know you love it!). So we are not completely lame. Just sort of. But since this year is a big number, or as big as you can get when your marriage is still younger than a kindergartner, I hereby humbly offer up a belated toast to our awesomeness. Five big ones since we tied the knot and got stuck for eternity, and we're still rolling! Breaking records right and left! Pretending to be grownups! Buying houses, paying loans, having careers and repopulating the earth! Good times. In honor of the event, I wrote this poem about Jessie. It rhymes and everything.

Jessie, Jessie, he's my man,
If he can't love me no one can!
Roses are red, violets are blue,
Jessie is cute and I am too.
There once was a boy from Lehi,
He liked to drink grape Nehi.
He likes his wife, he has a great life,
And semi decent wifi.
Knock Knock! Who's there?
A really patient, helpful, loving, tolerant husband.
Jessie who?

Okay, so that last part doesn't rhyme, but I don't know if you've heard, poetry doesn't have to rhyme anymore to be genius. I am simply ahead of my time. Anyway, I could wax eloquent for several more paragraphs, but we don't want to kill you with our mushiness and extremely moving and long story of love, life, and general silliness. So I'll just say this: In all seriousness, I have an amazing husband. I don't like to brag so I don't give him all the credit he deserves publicly all the time, but he really is so good to me and I'm still a little blown away I got so lucky and fell into this great life with him. I can honestly say he makes me incredibly happy, and I feel like any woman who can say that about her husband is doing pretty well for herself. So Happy Anniversary, Pookie Pie! And Happy Thanksgiving! And Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah! Merry Kwanza! The last five years have been one big holiday anyway. Let's keep it up and continue this party forever. And a little bit more.


(requisite photo of us, because we are beautiful, humble, refined people who you cannot get enough of)

An essay on our health.

So we get sick every month for about one week. I blame nursery and suppressed immune systems. November was no exception, and perhaps in celebration of cold weather and the coming of winter, it was worse than most months. We got hit with some colds that really took us out. As usual, this is what the sickness did to us: Madeline had very few symptoms other than a slight cough at night and a barely runny nose, but she was excessively cranky and disobedient all week. Kimberly was only slightly cranky but had a bad runny nose and cough, and woke up a lot at night because she was congested. I got slammed with headaches, sore throat, sinus pressure, fatigue, and other fun stuff. Jessie got it later than the rest of us and pumped himself up on iborofen and cold medicine and survived with a slight sore throat. That's usually how it goes every month. But this month instead of being wiped out for one day, I was unfunctional for about three or four, after which I cracked and went to the doctor. I love doctors because they tell you helpful things like "It's viral. It'll get better sometime. Good luck." So I stocked up on medicine for everyone and chocolate donuts (because I think the doctor meant to prescribe me some but didn't through typographical oversight) and we settled in to wait it out. Only when we went to Kimberly's year checkup, the doctor pronounced double ear infection. Missed that. Whoops. Apparently Kimberly is a tough little bugger and doesn't like to complain. But after a round of antibiotics all around, we're hopeful better days are coming. And I'm thinking about returning to the land of the living, after I put my house back in order.

But enough about germs and drugs and our laziness. Other than Kimberly's infections, she's a healthy little punk. Tall and skinny though. 90th percentile in height and 25th for weight. The doctor reccomended copious amounts of peanut butter, cheese, and other fats if she ever wants a chance to star on the Biggest Loser. Madeline begged for but did not receive a shot and had to content herself with checking out Kimberly's bandaid. She tried to invent a myriad of mosquito bites and sores when we got home to solicit her own bandaid, but the lack of blood did her in. So she had to settle for some leftover birthday cake and watching Cars for the tenth time. Poor girl.