Yeah, it really is about the kids.

I love my new phone, it's brought a lot more good than bad with it, but wow  has it been a pain to get stuff off it and onto my computer where I can do sensible stuff with it.  Today, though, I managed to get rsync-based backups working and now we're all good.  So there'll be a few new video posts from the past couple of months coming soon. This one is from last Friday, I think.  Daniel and James each got a bottle of bubbles from Lynne and while I was re-(re-(re-?))heating a coffee I realized that watching Christine, Daniel and James playing with them was too good to miss.  So here we are. @1:33 that's all I've got to say.

This is from Wednesday ... Christine took the boys out to pick up some sneakers.  Since the weather is finally taking a turn toward warm, it seems like a good idea.  They got back just after I'd finished cleaning up from supper and I assumed Daniel would be wiped out and ready to go right to bed.  Turns out not.  He was pretty hyper and James was James.  So they started running around.  Daniel made right for "Daniel's Toy" (that appears to be the proper name for it) and started running around with it.  Once James saw that he made right for the wagon and they just sort of fell into playing together, racing from the great room in the front to the kitchen. This lasted for about half an hour when Daniel finally started showing signs of being tired.  I picked him up intending to take him upstairs and put him to bed but James ran right up to me and said "Daddy!  Put Daniel down!"  Clearly he wasn't done playing yet. So I did, then I thought I'd best

Daniel took his first real steps today. He's been cruising for ages now.  He's been finger-walking for more than a month, he was doing not too bad at it before I went back to work and he went to daycare.  He'd been there maybe a week before I saw him doing the whole finger-walking-with-only-one-finger thing. But today, right after supper, the four of us were hanging out in the living room.  Christine was on the futon, I was on the floor, James was doing something and Daniel was at the play table when he turned around and decided he was just going to walk  over to Christine.  Three really solid, deliberate, confident steps completely hands-free. We were suitably impressed.  So much so that even James started saying "Daniel walked", but I don't think he really got the import of the event. Three steps was nowhere near enough for him, though, once he'd figured out how to make it work.  Before he went to bed he had one little walk that took him from the