he can't stop won't stop!

For the last few weeks, Dane has been OBSESSED with practicing his walking by clinging to our fingers and walking around. Tommy is basically his slave in this exercise, because Tommy is too nice to ever say no to him. (I, on the other hand, only agree to do it for limited amounts of time.) So Dane and Tommy will just walk around our apartment for half-hour intervals, Dane with his arms up high and Tommy bending over to reach his little arms. When he wants to walk, he will crawl over to you, pull your arm towards him, snatch your finger with his vice-like grip, and just start walking. He doesn't bother to see if you're coming--he'll just keep pulling on you until you get up and start following him around.

matchy matchy boys!

Dane is always VERY focused on the hard work he's doing. Walking takes a lot of concentration.

Although he's LOVED walking with our help, he hasn't really taken more than one step on his own--at least, until today! Becca was watching him during the day while I worked, and when she dropped him off at the end of the day today, she mentioned, "He was taking a bunch of steps today!" So I set him down standing up and he just got this big grin on his face and walked right over to me, pretty unsteady but all on his own. He went over to their house this morning not walking and came back taking up to 12 steps at a time! He is SO thrilled about it--every time he walked by himself this evening he'd start grinning and cackling and clapping for himself, looking at us expectantly waiting for us to start clapping and cheering too. And of course we're just as excited as he is. We'll get some pictures of him walking eventually.

Also, when Tommy got home, I brought Dane outside to meet him and had Dane walk over to him to surprise him. We had been just meandering, walking slowly along the sidewalk with Dane looking at the worms and wood chips and other fascinating elements of nature, but when I pointed Tommy out to Dane and he saw him, Dane started marching, walking as fast and as determinedly as he could over to Tommy, saying "Ooooh! Ooohh! Oooooh!" He knows what he wants, and what he wants is his daddy.

And to end, a few adorable pictures of Dane giggling while Tommy takes off his shoes and socks (for some reason the funniest thing to him all the time):