Leina does not stop talking.

Yesterday, Kevin looked at me and said, “let’s keep track of the amount of time during the day when she is silent.” Ha. That would be a whole two minutes. Maybe. This kid just talks and talks and talks and talks. I put her to bed talking and she wakes up talking. Most of her chatter involves her imaginary adventures with various animal friends. She has a serious Diego complex and I have often found her singing “Leiiiiiina, go Leina go” while pretending to swing from a vine. (For those of you who are uninitiated with Go Diego Go, count yourselves lucky.)

Kulia appears to be following in her sisters footsteps. Her chatter is also continuos from happy cooing to tired yelping and everything in-between. Her silences are longer, however, as she is often chowing down on her poor thumbs. However, between my two girls, our house is never silent. I actually tried turning on a CD the other day and the clashing noise of Leina calling to a baby chinchilla that needed rescuing, Kulia’s joyful cooing, and the poor Indigo Girls trying to compete gave me a pounding headache. So the only music in our house is child-made and it is sweet.

I’ve been feeling under the weather lately with a nagging cold. Kevin decided to give me a break and take the girls for a walk. As they headed out the door, I curled up on the sofa for a quick snooze. Leina saw me lying and immediately yelled “wait Daddy! I have to tuck in mommy with green!” Then she proceeded to tuck me in with her blanket, rub my back, and sing me Twinkle Twinkle as my lullaby to help me sleep.

Yes, I immediately grabbed her and took a big bite out of her sweet sweet cheek. She’s quite simply too delicious for words.

I went to a movie last night and it was wonderful. After little sister went down, I left Kevin to put Leina to bed and headed for the theatre. I’ve always liked seeing movies alone. During high school, I worked in the local theatre and one perk was that I could see all the movies I wanted for free. So that summer, I pretty much saw everthing that hit the cinema. I found I enjoyed sitting alone, just me, my popcorn and some Hollywood entertainment. When I was pregnant with Leina, that last month was unbearable hot. Since the little cottage didn’t have air conditioning, I found myself once again watching movies solo. I think I saw everything possible during July just to say cool. And now, with the kids, I am once again a solo movie watcher. I suppose someday we’ll hire a sitter and see movies together again but I don’t mind a little alone time. It’s actually quite wonderful.

So I went to see Serenity and it was great! A lot darker and scarier than I imagined but an all around good movie. Kev saw it earlier in the week so we have been discussing our reactions and thoughts. It’s definately on Kev’s DVD wishlist. That’s for sure!

But today, I’m back home with the girls. Leina is asleep and Kulia is propped up here on my lap drooling onto the keyboard. I’m surprised the thing hasn’t shorted out yet. This kid is a drool machine of unheard of proportions. I pretty much have to change her shirt and diaper at the same time ’cause they each get soaked at the same rate. How she manages this without becoming severly dehydrated is a mystery to me.

And have you ever seen a small, bald, fat kid trying to gum a keyboard? It’s hilarious. Trust me. Sop [ease forgive any typos you see. It’s very hard to type while being slowly gummed to death but the world’s cutest infant. Who has just decided to blow out a diaper on my lap.

Sigh.

Looks like I’m going to need a new outfit too!

For the last week or so my lower back has been killing me. By the end of the day, I can barely bend over from the ache. I thought it was from lifting all 30 lbs of Leina so I started cutting back. I’d have Leina walk up the stairs herself or have Kevin carry her if he was home. But even these changes did little to relieve my back pain.

So it was an eye opener when I took Kulia in for her 4 month appointment. I knew my kid was a chunker but she clocked in at 17 lbs 3 oz. That’s more than half a Leina! She’s in the 97th percentile for weight and length. I’m thinking the source of my strain may just be this chubba chubba and not her sister. Of course, this makes life a bit more difficult because I cannot expect Kulia to get herself upstair…. yet. At the rate this kid is going I expect her be crawling by Christmas. She’s simply amazing.

And sweet. Oh so wonderfully sweet. Before Leina, I wondered what it would be like to be a stay at home mom. Would I be happy? Fullfilled? Would I feel cut off from the “real” world? Would I feel like I was losing out on precious professional advancement? I’ve been so relieved to find that I love staying here with my girls. That I feel rewarded and challenged. That I feel like I’m doing something important with my time. Sure, I’ll probably never get my career totally back on track but somehow, all that sort of melts away when I look at Kulia’s sweet grin or play hide and seek with Leina. (Who, by the way is hilarious. When you ask “where’s Leina?” she’ll call out from where ever she’s hiding “I’m over here mommmy!”)

I am surprised at how grateful I am for this time. I realize how lucky I am that we can afford for me to stay home. The fact that we have the option is a luxury in and of itself. I know Kevin works hard to bring home the bucks but I also know that he appreciates how hard I work to keep these girls happy and healthy and thriving. And I don’t believe there is any other “job” that I could do right now that would be as important to me. So when people ask me “when are you going back to work?”, I just smile and respond that I’m currently working at the best job ever and I have to plans to quit any time soon.

Of course, having a live-in poopy diaper changer would be a nice perk but hey, that’s what my union is for, right?

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!