Today Amber took her first four real steps, in two sets of two. The first one was in the den, where we were goofing around and I had the drum machine on, which makes her want to wiggle and dance to the beat (or... near to the beat, or something). She stood up by herself and did a couple dance beats, then looked down at her feet and... step... step... looking like she thought she was being quite tricky, and then sat down. I tried to stand her back up but she wasn't interested, she just crawled away up the stairs to the kitchen.

A few minutes later we were in the kitchen and Vera got to see it this time. She was monkeying around with the cupboards down by the floor and she just stood up, took a couple tentative steps, and sat down again.

Those were the only four real steps so far. I reported before that she could crawl for quite a while before she really did much of it; she just felt better sitting. But once she got comfortable with it, now she crawls all over, so it feels like the same phase. She pulls herself up on the furniture into a standing position quite a bit, and sometimes traverses across the ottoman or something, holding on for balance. And she quite likes to walk with me, usually holding both her hands, all around the house and especially up and down the stairs, and outside in the grass.

She has become quite strong-willed. She's learned how to point and spends much of the time pointing at something she wants. Sometimes it's just general and she doesn't really care, but if she really wants something, she wants it, and she will cry and squirm until she gets it.

She learned the pointing from Dave and Ava, some cartoons that she really likes. They sing nursery rhyme songs, with very respectable computer animation. She is ok with Sesame Street songs, and she likes ABBA videos, but Dave and Ava are what she really wants, and she cries and gives you the remote if it turns off. They do a song called "One Little Finger" that involves pointing your fingers up, and then down, and she picked up the hand motions right from them. Only pointing bother her index fingers up, for a couple weeks, but it just happened on her birthday that she pointed her fingers down as well. Super cute.

They also do the Itsy Bitsy Spider, and they don't really focus on it but the kids in the cartoon do the finger-walking thing, so I started doing it along with wide arm motions for the rain coming down and washing the spider out. She can't really do the finger-walking, she just kind of smashes her hands together and turns them a little bit, and then waves her arms around to wash the spider out.

Still no really talking; again, she can do it, she has made all sorts of words, but doesn't really use them for anything. She sort of squeals a lot when she doesn't like things, which is a lot. Her favorite word lately sounds much like "dang it", but she didn't get it from us and she doesn't use it for anything in particular that we can tell. It usually seems to indicate her interest in something.