He'll probably climb a tree too tall and ride his bike too fast

Well, I promised you a post. A post about this boy:

 

This is his angry face. But not really. His angry face is much more angry.

 

Anyway, it has only been a month since his birthday, but he deserves a post all the same. Because this boy is awesome. A little bundle of terror and fun. We liken him unto our own Energizer bunny. He never stops going, and when I pray for the safety of my children, it's possible I pray most sincerely for his. Luckily he hasn't had many serious incidents since the back to back face mashings that provided such great photo fodder for facebook, but he's always smashing his hand, his finger, hitting his head, falling down, getting stuck, and otherwise making us fear for his life. When he's not doing that, he's making messes, a sampling of which I have already graced you with. I don't bat an eye when I walk through the house and step in something wet anymore. The boy has a royal obsession with dumping and filling. Also with putting toilet paper in the toilet and flushing it. Over and over and over and over. You could toilet paper someone's house with his spoils. Other tidbits about Spencer:

 

• He loves to terrorize people. He chases everyone around with his hands up like claws roaring like a dinosaur. I literally find the girls cowering in corners in fear.
• He has to pick his own clothes and get himself dressed. If you pick clothes he will not wear them unless you put them back in the drawer and let him pick. Other quirky habits: He changes pajamas four times a night, he likes to wear the girl's socks, and he refuses in genera; to wear matching pajama tops and bottoms. Also he tends to lose his pants.
• Speaking of terrorizing, he loves Ethan. So so much. So much that he tends to throw himself upon Ethan with great force and grab his limbs and wrestle and wake him up from naps because he misses him so badly. Did I mention I also tend to pray with some fervency for Ethan's safety?
• He loves cars and trains. Like many boys, he dotes on Thomas, and one of his favorite things is to get piles of cars and line them up in rows while laying on his stomach. Maybe I'm a little biased, but slightly adorable beyond words.
• He is always excited about everything. His vocal abilities are only so so, but he manages to convey his meaning mostly through inflection. Everything ends in a high pitched squeal of-excitement. "Dad-DEE?!? Mad-LYN?!? Cook-KEE?!?" He may or may not be accused of sounding like a girl. Hopefully puberty will be a relief for him.
• He loves nursery now. Only took six months, but now he runs in like a champ and beats up the other kids in delight. We're so proud. The nursery leaders probably feel the same way when we come to get him that I feel at bedtime.
• Other things Spencer enjoys in no particular order: shoes, getting his nails painted, outside, slides, treats, juice, Daddy, dumping things, dogs at a distance, doing things himself, reading to himself, ripping up books, meat, dress up, climbing, jumping, tackling, dolls, snacks, ipads, iphones, anything electronic, hiding under blankets, running away, pushing things, pushing people, laughing maniacally.

So that's Spence for you. A little bundle of joy and mischief and love and independence and busyness. We sure love him and couldn't get along without him, although we'd probably breathe easier if he lived in a plastic wrapped bubble in an enclosed bouncy house. Happy belated birthday sweet boy.

Born to be Wild- or, All about Boys

It's been almost six months since we became a tribe of six (and with six of us I do feel like we qualify as a tribe now, or maybe a small pack of wild dogs). And let me tell you, some days I still feel as overwhelmed as the first day Jessie went back to work and said, "Good luck! Stay alive!" Once in a great while I feel like I'm starting to get on top of things, and that maybe in the not so distant future I might be a cool, accomplished, productive member of society. The ratio of these moments is somewhere along the lines of the ratio of the number of times Spencer creates a mess to the number of times he cleans one up. Hmm, funny, there might be a correlation there.

Anywho, I probably only have the gumption to chronicle anything today because I'm utilizing this bad boy:

 

This is my birthday present. Our old laptop was perfectly useable and awesome, except the small detail that the screen was almost entirely detached from the keyboard. And it is not supposed to be removable like these newfangled tablet computer whatsits. So we splurged and now I have a shiny new computer with only a few crumbs in the keyboard. Because the children like how shiny and new it is too. It makes me want to do computer stuff.

 

So back to raising multiple small heathens. A lot of the stress comes from this deceptively cute life form:

 

Don't you love his awesome hair? Small side note: I have since cut off the wild patchy Mohawk, left over from when he went entirely bald except on the top of his head. It's all growing back nicely now, but I couldn't bring myself to cut it even and respectable. I'm a wimp like that. But then one day I just seized the moment and ran a razor over his head and now he looks like he's ten years old. But I'm really good at tangents today. We're supposed to be talking not about how adorable he is, but his evil plan to take over the world.

 

Ethan loves to be chill, easy-going, delightful, and happy, until he doesn't. He is much more like Madeline as a baby than either of the last two children, and obviously, this scares Jessie and I witless. He still has a fair bit of baby eczema going on despite my going mostly off milk and soy, and the itching bothers him. Also, he has seen fit to follow in his brother's footsteps and be an early teether. He has four so far. And unlike his brother, he is not a fast learner when it comes to nursing gently. Also, even beyond the itchiness and teething, he's a pretty lousy sleeper. At night he's okay, but during the day he doesn't like to sleep more than thirty or forty minutes at a time unless he's exhausted and protected from siblings. And he fights sleep worse than Spencer does, which is saying something. He must be nursed, rocked, or swung to sleep. We've started crying it out, which is proving to be just as traumatic for me as when we did it with Madeline, and I get to spend a lot of time listening to my baby screech like he's dying and suffering from guilt. But I keep reminding myself that it made Madeline so much happier, and therefore will solve all my problems ever, because if four children have taught me anything, it's that the same method works on every child without fail. So the upshot of all this is, Ethan is one of my more difficult babies. But he's so cute. Drat.

 

Since we're talking about evil plans to take over the world:

 

I just realized this is from his birthday, and it's March and I never wrote a birthday post for him. See, my one blogging goal. Poor third child. Maybe I'll get around to that. Which means maybe I won't tell you right this moment every detail of living with a two year old Spencer, and save that for a birthday post. Except this list:

 

Strawberry syrup on the rug.

Bottle of blue snowcone syrup on the carpet and kitchen floor.

Small pools of milk carefully poured onto every kitchen chair. And under every kitchen chair.

Ran over by a shopping cart. Twice.

Ate a whole box of ding dongs.

Ate a whole bag of tootsie rolls.

Dumped several bags of cereal. Multiple times.

Dumped one bag of cereal into his toy wagon and carted it around the house.

Poured out several pitchers of juice. Multiple times.

Opened all his birthday presents before his birthday. Twice.

Bit the baby. On the nose and his fingers. Multiple times.

Stole several rolls while they were rising. Reshaped them.

Stole my can opener. Found two days later in a toy bin.

Poured water all over the bathroom floor. Many times.

Smashed his hand in the door.

Got lost at Chuck E. Cheese.

Got lost at Walmart. Multiple times.

Dropped a full box of cookies behind the couch.

Pulled all the pillows and cushions off the sectional. Every day. Multiple times a day.

Stole and lost my phone. Multiple times.

 

Anyway. Just a small sampling of Spencer's last few weeks. There is more but I have repressed it to protect my sanity. Love that kid. More to come on him.

 

I suppose this post will be strictly masculine, because as much dirt as I could dish on the girls, this has become quite a long post. And it's dinner time. My kids are really demanding about sustenance. It's not my fault if I'm trying to starve them in an effort to keep them from growing. So. Until later, after the feeding frenzy has subsided.

 

 

 

 

 

You're Hot, then You're Cold

So. I had this goal to update this blog four times a month this year. Because I love you all. But now that goal has the lofty title of being the first New Year's goal to be kaput. Unless we pretend January didn't happen. So Happy February and Happy New Year!

No, but really. I didn't really have much time to blog this month. I know I like to be a bit sarcastic and light-hearted on this blog, but we can be real enough for one paragraph to admit motherhood is no walk in the park, right? I love all my children like I love chocolate cake, but it's been a rough patch. One of those seasons when every child likes to go through a "challenging phase" at the same time. Now, I'm no shrinking flower when it comes to challenges, but four at a time can really deplete your patience. But we're still alive, and still glad to have four kids, so Warners for the Win!

So, in order to honor the good and the bad, and make you simultaneously desperately want children and as community birth control, here's one awesome and one not so awesome thing about parenting each of of our little rascals. No pictures, because of copyrights and such.

Ethan, the challenging: Worst Sleeper Award: I think Ethan might give Madeline a run for her money for most needy baby. Between teething (1 tooth and counting), and skin issues that make him really itchy, Ethan does not like sleeping. And when he wakes up he lets you know his displeasure with those signature Warner lungs. Combine that with some of the other children and sleep deprivation abounds.

Ethan, the delightful: Baby Laughs: This is not unique to Ethan, but he is in that charming baby stage where his smiles and laughs are free and easy, and everyone in the house is addicted. Nothing can cure the fatigue blues like a good hearty Ethan laugh.

Spencer, the challenging: Busy Bee: Spencer never. Ever. Stops. He is always in everything, attacking the baby for those laughs, trying to eat everything in the pantry, tormenting his sisters, and stealing any electronic device he can get his hands on. We switched him to a toddler bed after Christmas and he has not quite gotten the swing of things, so he is often up until ten or eleven because he sneaks out and falls asleep on the stairs. Which means a long day of busy Spencernkess for Mom and Dad, with no respite when the other kids are fast asleep.

Spencer, the delightful: Every Day is So Exciting: Spencer, at almost two, is constantly in wonder at all the cool stuff around him. A cookie! Wow! A book! Amazing! Nursery! Yay! He is constantly giggling at his good fortune and reveling in all the cool things he's never seen before, and his excitement is a bit infectious. It's hard to stay mad long at that happy go lucky kid.

Kimberly, the challenging: Lest you get weary of hearing how my children never sleep (ha, see what I did there?), we'll choose for our one thing Kimberly's aversion to Primary. She does not like change, and has only successfully attended Primary all the way through a few times. She doesn't want us to leave and gets all puppy dog eyed and cries and has to use the bathroom and gets stomach aches and head aches and is generally pitiful. (Doesn't school sound like it's going to go well?) And she has no qualms about missing singing and fun to come sit quietly in the adult Sunday School class.

Kimberly, the delightful: Little Charmer: Kimberly defitnitely has the gift of charm. She asks adorable questions, mothers her siblings, sings little songs, and every inflection and twirl and smile screams "Love me!" She is a sensitive soul who knows what just to say to melt your heart when she's in trouble, and even when she's in full meltdown mode, she'll shut her eyes and bunch her fists and scream, "I'm trying to listen and be good but I JUST. CAN'T. LIFE IS SO HARD." And you're laughing.

Madeline, the challenging: Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde: Madeline, bless her soul, lives life with a passion that must be exhausting. And as sweet as she is, when something happens she doesn't approve of, she can turn on a pin and start the scariest tantrums you've ever seen. Usually about small, meaningless things, usually ending in her screaming and kicking her bedroom door. As our guinea pig, she has parents who have no tried and true method for dealing with these behaviors, so there are a lot of tears on both sides figuring it out. We'll either get it someday, or start selling tickets.

Madeline, the delightful: Learner Extraordinaire: Can I just say that probably one of the absolute best and most satisfying aspects of parenting is seeing your child learn and master new things? Madeline has grown leaps and bounds in kindergarten, and she can now read entire picture books mostly by herself. And it is delightful. We have so much fun reading together and she constantly startles me with things she knows. I love seeing her use her talents and maybe, someday, become as nerdy and awkward as me.

So, there's a sampling of what's making us laugh and cry lately. If you don't hear from me for a while, I'm just discovering a whole new crop of fantastic and terrible things about my children, and enjoying, if not every minute, enough amazing ones to make it worth it ten times over.

Same old Lang Syne

We'll, it's that time of year again. Wherein I attempt to better myself as a human being and reflect and reminisce and look ahead and prioritize and ruminate and assess and strategize and grammaticize. Probably I should resolve to write on my blog more often. But that would take the fun out of life. I told Jessie I have a great plan this year. We spent the day organizing our house. So my New Tear's Resolution is to organize my house. Boom. Halfway there, and I can relax until 2015. Sometimes I amaze myself with my good ideas. But I do need to come up with some amazing resolve to share with you folks because Tradition! tradition! So.

Nope. Feeling no motivation. Which gives me an idea. Instead of figuring out what I should accomplish this year, let's list the things I already accomplished this year. Because let's face it, I've been pretty rad. Prolifically productive, really. And let's make a numbered list. Because I love numbered lists.

1. I made a baby. A pretty cute baby. Honestly, this took most my efforts this year and maybe took precedence over everything else. But it was worth it, because I grew a happy smily cuddly human being and that makes me giddy.

2. I kept alive three additional human beings, and they are reasonably clean and well educated and can walk and talk and identify various cartoon characters. And they occasionally say please and thank you and I love you. And they don't smell like a dumpster. Amazing work there.

3. I completed seven years of marriage, and my husband claims he still loves me, and I even made dinner for him a few times and let him go to football games and stuff because I basically rock.

4. I got a little bit crafty. I helped my kids do things involving glue and paint, I even made my own ugly Christmas sweater and utilized a glue gun. It's not origami, but you should be impressed.

5. I organized some stuff. Problem solved and planned and made some corners of my house useable, and dare I say, pretty. I may have acquired a small obsession with the organization department at Walmart.

There was some other stuff I did, but I don't want to nauseate you with my coolness and make you all jealous and stuff. All in all, it's been a pretty good year, and one with a lot of changes for us, so we're inking next year we'll just do nothing. Like Veggie Tale pirates. Here's hoping you had an awesome year and were super cool and enjoyed your life. Happy New Year everybody!

Here's to the little guys.

Hey all. What's up? I figured it was about time to let you all in on the recent ongoings over here. Having four children has definitely been an experience, but we're starting to get into a routine or something. So I thought I'd give you a little rundown of some (non-comprehensive) highlights for each of the family. Here goes.

Youngest to oldest, shall we?

Here's the man of the hour. Ethan is definitely his own person, but also many things about him remind me of the other kids. He sure looks mightily like his brother. He is very loved around here, and keeping his siblings off of him is pretty much a full time job. He is mostly very chill and sleeps very good at night, although he has some fussy spells we think are because he's not a fan of dairy.He has just started smiling, which is a lot of fun, and Jessie even had him laughing a bit. Probably because Jessie is so funny looking. Ethan enjoys bouncing, eating, napping and being held.

This pretty much sums up Spencer. Cute as heck and trouble to the core. He enjoys picking out his own clothes and taking off his clothes. He falls down a lot, so he pretty much always has bruises, scrapes, bloody noses, or something. One particularly nasty fall left half his face bruised and his lip swollen up like a platypus. We're constantly in terror of concussions and falls. He loves his brother to a fault. He is always in everything. He dumps out cereal daily, gets out pans, spills water, plays in the bathroom, steals keys, and is generally a menace to society. (And he's not even 25 yet). But his laugh is ridiculously cute and when he cuddles it's amazing.

Kimber continues to be the most adorable thing on the planet, who happens to moonlight as the Hulk. She just had her third birthday and is still tickled to be 3. She is still verbally gifted, and pays close attention to everything, often asking questions I have no idea how to answer. Be careful what you say around this one. She loves big words, drawing, ponies, dancing, and being contrary. Reverse psychology works wonders on her. She is obsessed with Cinderella and likes to help me cook. She is a sensitive soul, and probably my only child who prefers me to Daddy (jury's still out on Ethan.)

Madeline is my guinea pig, by virtue of being first to do everything. She started kindergarten and LOVES it. She loves recess, the bus, her teacher, homework, reading, her classmates, her backpack, treats, holidays, and everything else about school. She is getting older and more responsible, and loves to help with the baby. She still loves socializing and begs for friends as soon as she gets home from school. She still does drama better than anybody I know, and we often have some attitude adjustments. But she's also a good girl who rarely violates a rule if it's been impressed upon her. She loves songs and little ditties, spelling, months of the year, Sprout, and her siblings.

Jessie is, in a word, busy. Being Elder's Quorum president takes a good chunk of his time, as does increased responsibility at work. Here we see him supporting Noshavember. I think we can all agree the man looks mighty fine with a beard. But it was scratchy, so it's gone now. He's been great about picking up the slack around here when I get overwhelmed. We took a little anniversary trip without the kids (except Ethan, the little mooch), and it was great to remember that I like this guy quite a bit and we used to be young and fun. He is only a little maimed from playing football this Thanksgiving, and he enjoys being the coolest Dad in the world and making me smoothies.

No picture of me. Because my computer is about to die. But trust me, I'm the one writing this, and I'm still alive. They took me out of visiting teaching because someone told them I don't get relief society and now I'm a webelos leader, so lots of fun new adventures there. I spend most of my time nursing, doing laundry, trying to sleep, or trying to control my children.

So that's us lately. The Warner's are super duper exciting. Thanks for stopping by. See you at the next circus reunion.

Ethan goes to the Zoo

Hey, sports fans. You thought this was dead, didn't you? Surprise! Of course, there is only one thing that could drag this blog out of retirement. We had to chronicle the expansion of the crew.

Introducing Ethan Jessie Warner. He was born September 16, 2013 at 7:39 pm, weighing in at 8 pounds 5 ounces, three weeks ahead of schedule. We think he's pretty cute.

So, how this all happened. Birth story! Except not too detailed so none of you get all traumatized. I was expecting to go to 40 weeks, because hey, I always do. But Ethan apparently wanted to be his own man, because starting Sunday morning, I started having fairly frequent contractions. This was either due to a yoga ball, really spicy sausage, a long walk, or just because he was big and he was ready. Or none of the above. Your guess is as good as mine. I seriously thought we would be at the hospital by Sunday night, but then the contractions just stopped. I figured he was just going to give me three weeks of false labor like Spencer did and went to bed. Then I woke up at 2 am with more contractions. They didn't stop when you do all the things you're supposed to do to try and stop contractions, so off to the hospital we merrily went. Where they told me I was dilated the exact same amount I had been at my last doctor's appointment, which is to say, not much. They speculated I just had an infection that was irritating and causing contractions. I was contracting enough, though, they decided to keep me for a while for observation. At this point the contractions were getting really painful and I was ready to cry thinking they might send me home to deal with them for three more weeks. So I was praying pretty hard that something would change. And lo and behold, in two more hours, I had dilated from a 1 to a 4, probably through sheer force of will. Or not. So they decided to admit me and get me some drugs, which was the best news of my life. When they gave me an epidural, I got a little loopy with happiness. It might have been the low blood pressure, but I felt super relaxed and awesome. 

Well, it was pretty lucky I dilated enough to get admitted, because as soon as I got the epidural, I stopped progressing pretty much all day. After Spencer's quick labor, I felt pretty confident things would go fast, but it was so slow. Longer than Madeline's labor by quite a bit. The nurse was pretty funny, because she was bound and determined to be there for the birth. But slow and steady we went, and the epidural started to kind of selectively wear off, so I was starting to get pretty uncomfortable again. By about six thirty Jessie and I had despaired of having a baby before midnight. But then they decided to do this thing where they lay you in weird positions to try and speed things up, and that must have done the trick,  because all of a sudden I was puking and ready to push. I knew this because unlike with the other children, the epidural was basically not working on half my body and I kind of wanted to die, and I was trying to tell Jessie I couldn't stop the baby from coming out but I was puking too hard to tell him. He knew the puking meant we were close though, so they were getting everything ready. The doctor arrived about thirty seconds before Ethan's head popped out, because let me tell you, when you're puking your guts out it's kind of impossible to stop having a baby. And thus Ethan entered the world with great to do while I was the most miserable I've ever been in my life. But once I got to hold Ethan, everything was good. And I was pretty surprised at how big he was. 

So. Enough story. We all know you want pictures. Sorry, they are mostly off of my phone or stolen from my mother.

Here he is, like most Cougar fans, looking a little uncomfortable at our inability to convert.

Random picture of the other rugrats, who love Ethan so so much, and love throwing tantrums too. Reentry has been a bit rough for Kimberly especially. Spencer hated me at the hospital and has been blissfully happy since we came home. Madeline has been extra emotional.

Ethan in his monkey hat the kids picked out for him.

Happy to be a big sister again. Because now she can ride in the back of the van with Madeline. These are the important things in life.

All the kiddos together for the first time. Spencer would not relinquish my water cup, even for the paparazzi. 

Well, there you go. Hope you enjoyed this update from the World of Warner. 

Hey.

Hey! So. Summer. Kicking our trash pretty much. Time for catch up. Speed blog style.

-We went camping. That was a mistake. The kids loved it. I think I died but I'm not sure because I probably repressed the memory.

-We attended a family reunion. Jessie played about twenty sports and died. The children were sleep deprived for several days and then all passed out together after too much swimming, treats, and sun. Madeline lost her second tooth and had a mental breakdown.

-Kimberly has been potty training. It has either been slowly but wildly successful or we've wasted six months of our life. She wears underwear now but who knows if that's a good idea.

-Spencer falls down a lot. Come to think of it, pretty much all my children run into things a lot. Grace is not in high supply here. But I pretty much have to check Spencer for concussions ten times a day, because his fixation with climbing and destruction is probably going to be his ultimate demise.

-I am getting really fat. I'm officially past the whole second trimester happy place. I'm already getting a lot of "When is that baby coming again?" and "How long do you have left?", which is really what you want to hear with a whole trimester left. Also, we have no idea what to name our child. He will probably be known as Surf if we fail to come up with something.

-Madeline started soccer. We've only made it to two games. She enjoyed the first and thought she scored every time she touched the ball. She hated the second game and only wanted to sit and drink water. Maybe tennis or chess next time.

There's probably more. But we're a little frazzled by temper tantrums and children who don't like sleeping, so we're probably going to go hide in a bunker now. Hope you're having a good summer. Stay cool.