Garage Sale-ing

Its garage sale time. I love going to garage sales. So far, I found a golden heart locket and a purple dress for Claire, a spring jacket and some pants for Milena, and an awesome puzzle for me:

But the best find so far was a $20 headboard our neighbors were more than happy to see leave. I think because when they looked at it, they saw this:

But when I looked at it, I saw a new orbital sander in my future, and this:

Claire was more than excited to pick out the new hardware, and knew exactly what she wanted.

Unfortunately, I didn't look at the doors closely enough before drilling the holes. I didn't realize they fit into the grooves only one way, so the knobs are both on the right instead of one on the left and one on the right as I imagined. But otherwise, it looks exactly like I thought it would, after a little wood fill, some serious sanding, and a lot of paint.

Cousins

Milena and I had the chance to play with Henry for a few hours this morning. I think it was the first time they had some good one-on-one play. Usually Claire is around, and Henry thinks Claire is pretty cool. If the options are Claire and Milena, he goes Claire every time. So it was fun to see he and Milena interact a bit. He was very sweet to her.

Knowing we don't have any of the cool toys (trucks/trains/cars etc), he smartly brought some of his own trains, and it didn't take long for him to break them out. Milena mostly used them as phones (wait, boys and girls play in the same way, right??), and Henry wasn't sure what to do about that. Mostly he ignored the misunderstanding and repeatedly asked her to put the train on the track. She happily ignored him and said 'hi' repeatedly into the train-phone.

Then I asked Henry some questions. Things started getting pretty fishy pretty quickly. When questioned about his new sister, he was able to confirm that she was 'little', her name is Tess, that she was loud and that she had 'two arms'. But the details get sketchy after that. Henry reports she enjoys playing trains and swimming, and that she has 'three or four' eyes, 'two or three' noses and 'four or five' feet. It was Milena's turn to be skeptical, and she didn't hide it well.

Fortunately, they were able to get past all of that and they had a really great time together.

Happy Birthday, Milena!

Milena turned one today, so we had a party at the zoo. Lucky for us, we were able to share the day and do a combo birthday party with our friend's daughter. We met in Hawaii, and by chance they moved to Madison a few weeks ago. Thanks to Eric for setting us up.

Milena was less than enthusiastic about the cake. She played along for a bit, took a few small bites from Claire which she later spit out, and then really didn't want to have anything to do with it. Having the party at a picnic table presented the challenge of feeding the birthday girls without high chairs. Dave was unsuspecting and without experience in these things and so it was obvious he'd be the one covered in frosting.

But the other one year-old knew exactly what to do and went to work covering herself in frosting.

After a quick clean up we hit the zoo. It was a great day.

So close!

Milena is so close to walking now. She long since been an ace at crawling. Then she pulled up to standing on furniture, the wall, your leg, whatever was there. But now she's able to stand up right in the middle of the floor, no handles, and she does it all the time. She's balancing there for longer and longer, and I know its just a matter of days before she takes those first few steps. She is learning how to do this so much differently than Claire did. Claire somehow just did it. She rarely fell, and when she did, it was never bad. I don't even remember any blood. Milena, on the other hand, is working for it. She's invested so many tears and cuts. She's determined, and she'll get it.

Also, we got a new table. It is awesome, and probably our first grown-up furniture purchase. Justin, Jacque and the kids were kind enough to come over for a lasagna dinner to break it in. Next up will be chair shopping. The ones in the picture have seen better days and are known to give out while a person is seated in them. Thats only fun for so long.

We hit Ella's Deli on Monday, as a Spring Break wrap up. Claire loved it.

Milena did as well, despite the skeptical look on her face here.