I find myself torn over Kulia. On the one hand, I love her baby-ness. I adore her gummy smile, her sweet coos, the soft baby fuzz that covers her head and the way she falls asleep in the crook of my arm as if I’m the lap of luxury. But on the other hand, I can’t wait for her to grow up. I find myself wishing for the day when she sleeps through the night, takes a nap longer than 45 minutes, and is able to sit at the dinner table with us. It just doesn’t seem fair that I can’t have all the preciousness of an infant along with the ease of a toddler. And so I vacilate back and forth.

For example, right now Kulia is happily cooing in her little swing. She has been taking 30 minutes nap all day so I’ve gotten nothing done for the house or myself. Leina is in her crib on her afternoon power nap and oh how I wish Kulia would join her sister. The idea of two whole quiet hours to myself! But then, I turn around and catch Kulia’s eye and she breaks into this big goofy, slobbery, toothless grin and all other thoughts seems to scatter from my mind.

I know, I know, before I know it, she’ll be walking and talking and I’ll wonder what happended to my sweet little baby. So I guess I’ll stop typing and go bask in her little infant glow while it’s still here.

Oh man, she just got the hiccups. Can there be anything cuter?!?!

The Screaming Flipper. Sounds like some crazy bar drink, no? Maybe something where you take a dense liquor, top it with a lighter one and then invert before drinking. However, since I am surrounded my small children and not a wild bar scene, my screaming flipper is none other than my little baby Kulia whose new tricks are flipping and screaming.

When I put her down, I never know how I will find her. Sometimes she’s on her belly sucking her fingers, other times on her back chowing away. She seems able to roll either direction at will. She can also rotate herself around so I often find her head pointing in the direction where her feet used to be. One just never knows.

And the screaming! The screaming! She just adores screaming and will burst out with a random shriek at the oddest moments. I think she’s learned that if she screams, we come running so often she’ll let out a blood curling yell and when we arrive on the scene she looks us at us all smiles and gigles. Little stinker. I guess the scream is her way of saying, “um, hello people, adorable child here needs a little attention please.” All I know is that it’s jarring and shocking that such a big sound can come out of such a small body.

So month three shall be forever remembered as the month of the Screaming Flipper.

I peeked into Leina’s mouth today and the tip of that old molar is through. Yeah! Light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, I now have a whole new battle to fight. For the last few days, Leina has been able to eat whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, where ever she wanted. To put it mildly, any and all meal rules were thrown to the wind. So today, I began reigning in my child.

Leina’s favorite place to eat the last few days have been our stairs. She’ll take a tub of yogurt and head for the bottom stair. She’ll sit, take one scoop of yogurt, and then move up one stair. There, she will sit, take one bite, then ascend one more stair. She’ll repeat this procedure until she reaches the top step at which point she’ll take her yogurt into the upstairs playroom and scoop away. Of course, she wants me to sit and move up the stairs with her. The whole process takes at least 30 minutes and while her teeth were hurting I was more than willing to appease her. Today, however, she opened the fridge ( a new trick I’m not so fond of), grabbed her yogurt and shouted, “come on mommy, lets go to the stairs!” It broke my heart to tell her no, we had to eat the yogurt at the table. She was so confused. What did I mean at the table? We always ate on the stairs! Poor Leina. After much wrangling and a few tears, we settled into her chair and ate in our seats. She seemed a bit perplexed but she decided to follow my rules this time. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Kulia continues to grow and grow. I packed away all ther 0-3 month clothing and pulled out the 3-6 month stuff. I find I’m still having to squeeze her into 3-6 already! I can’t believe it but she might be ready for 6-9 months already. This kid is just a cubba-chubba-lova-lova baby. She still has the sweetest temperment and is content as can be so long as she has her fingers and thumbs. She loves her thumbs. I mean L-O-V-E-S. Yesterday, she had both thumbs and both index fingers in her mouth and was violently sucking away. If she could fit her whole hand in, I’m sure she would. Her favorite pastime is to lie on the ground, sucking her hands, rolling around and watching Leina. Oh yes, like her sister, she appears to enjoy football too. What a great baby!

So all is returned to normal in the McLaughlin house. At least until the next tooth starts to move. The real question is going to be who gets to teeth next, Kulia or Leina? The race is on!

Yesterday, Leina ate ranch dressing for lunch and butter for dinner.

Yes, butter.

How sad is that?

Stick a fork in me; I’m done. I am not really typing this because my body has been broken into thousands of little pieces and scattered all over my house. I thought my life was hard when Leina decided to enter the terrible two’s full force. I was so clueless. What I wouldn’t give to go back to last week’s tantrums and irrationalitites.

This week, you see, not only do I have a full fledged terrible two-er on my hands, I also have a terrible two-er who is cutting a morlar. And let me tell you, hell on earth is right here in my living room.

Leina is miserable. She is beyond miserable. I think we passed miserable on Tuesday and are now somewhere between inconsolible and radioactive. Poor Leina has about lost her mind over this molar. It must hurt something awful because the whole right side of her face has swollen up and I’ve noticed she’s slurring her words as if even having to open her jaw to speak is unbearable. Tylenol has no apparent effect at any dose I’ve tried so far. And, of course, eating is out of the question. Now, Leina with tooth pain is ugly. Leina with tooth pain and extreme hunger is sheer madness. She’s so hungry and hurting that I found her wailing and rolling around the kitchen floor this morning screaming, “my teeeeeeth….. my teeeeeeth….. I’m sooooo huuuuuungry…..” And everytime I try to feed her, she completely looses it from the pain. So we are on day three and Leina and I are both getting a little woozy. I don’t know how much longer this will last but it’s a good thing it’s Friday and reinforcements (i.e. Kevin) are on the horizon.

The truly sad news is that only one molar is on the move. Yes, even in my shell shocked state I can still do rudimentary math and according to my calculations, I have three more rounds of this terror to survive. It ain’t looking good. My eldest is surviving on about four bites of ice cream a day and taking out her pain and hunger and anger on me. I’m working on about three hours of sleep because the youngest has decided to hit a growth spurt and wants to nurse every two hours at night. I think between Leina and myself we might have one ounce of reason between us. Well, maybe half and ounce.

Maybe.