I am willing to bet money that Ian will be walking by Thanksgiving. The other night Jeff and I thought he was about to take a step. Today when I went to pick him up from school, he was standing without holding onto anything with a big purple maraca in his hand, shaking it and standing very steadily.

He sat in Jeff's lap on the way home today and actually sat without fidgeting too much. He was just watching us as we talked with our commuting buddies, Beth and Kelly. I think he's gotten to know Beth pretty well and he smiled at her a lot and tried to touch her. He still likes to pat things and people when he's happy. Like his dad, Ian likes to play with my hair and will take strands of it in his fingers. He never pulls hard, though. It could be that I'm biased, but I think Ian is a lot gentler than most kids. He doesn't poke or pinch or grab people's faces or hair -- well, every now and then, but then you just say "gentle" or "nice" and he stops.

And he just gets smarter every day. Christina said that when she puts the kids down for naps, sometimes she shakes the crib to rock them to sleep. She was shaking Ian's crib one day and then she stopped before he fell asleep, but still had her hand on the crib. Ian just lay there and reached out and grabbed the crib bar and started shaking it himself.

I forgot to mention that yesterday in the bath, he would look down at his belly, then grab it with both hands as if he were measuring how much flab he had on his belly, then look up at me and smile as if he were very amused by his little milk belly (I am guessing that would be the baby version of a beer belly).

(The picture above was taken on Sunday after we went out to play in the park. It was an unseasonably warm day -- 70F -- and Ian enjoyed the swing and the slide.)