She's a climber

The girls have just been a joy this last month.  Teagan is crawling, climbing, and cruising furniture like a pro.  She can stand and hold her balance for a few seconds, but hasn't tried to walk yet.  We're in no hurry, she just hit 10 months old.  Let me remind you that Claudia was 13 months when she started walking.  Teagan bounces between being very active to being my snuggle bug.  She likes to snuggle soft blankets and stuffed animals and give us lots of cuddles.  The girls (for the most part) play really well together.  Claudia is gentle and good at entertaining her little sister.  Sometimes it falls apart in the afternoon during "grumpy hour" but I'm happy that they're such good playmates most of the day.  We have discovered Teagan's love for noodles.  She likes them long and slurps them up.  It's very cute.  I have to watch her starch intake a bit because if there are rice or noodles on her place, then those definitely go first.  Luckily, she still loves pretty much anything that she can feed to herself.  About my only complaint about Teagan is that she shrieks and is generally kind of loud.

Our big excitement for August so far was throwing a family garage sale at my parents' house.  They spent a lot of time cleaning out the garage & basement and us girls did our best at clearing out the closets of childhood toys, although I still have a few boxes full that I haven't been able to part with.  Gina & I added in a heap of infant clothes and we had ourselves a very successful sale.  We made $350 and got rid of probably 2/3 of our offerings of mostly 25 cent and $1 items, so that's a lot of stuff!  It was fun to see some of our (formally) prized possessions go to a new home.  While spending several days in Kirkland, Claudia was able to check on her thriving garden that she planted with Grandpa.  Beans, carrots, and flowers, oh my!  Besides that, the girls and I (and often times Auntie Neely) are just busy doing activities and visiting friends with kids.  Claudia continues to be very talkative and likes to tell long stories (sounds familiar).  Her favorite expressions are "actually..." and "well..." which leads her into her next thought.  She often says, in a loving voice, "ah, that's so cute" in reference to baby clothes and things Teagan does.  She obviously picked that up from me!  Also, she invented her own language, which she calls "Pears" and she likes to make me guess the translation from Pears to English, which has potential to be fun, but is often quite frustrating.