On the verge

James has been standing while holding on and cruising like a champ.  He can stand and hold onto his Cars ride-on toy and walk all over the place.  (This toy drives me crazy because it makes the most annoying sounds and Lightning McQueen says dumb stuff...)  And I just know he is on the verge of standing without holding on and walking.  But he hasn't yet, so we will wait patiently.  I think he may do it any day now.  Yesterday morning, he was standing between my legs, holding onto the chair I was in.  When I handed him his sippy cup, he reached up, grabbed it, and proceeded to down most of it, all while standing on his own.  Then he realized that Momma was watching the whole thing, and he slowly sat down.  The look on his face was something like "The first rule of standing on your own is you don't talk about standing on your own".  Rhonda also mentioned this morning that she's seen him sort of walk from one side of his pack and play to the other.  This is funny, because the only time he's even in there is when he's supposed to be napping.  So, I guess he is my kid.
Some other things that he has starting doing include throwing everything out of his crib when he doesn't want to go to bed (and I think "have at it little man, now there is less in there to distract you"), eating more and more table food (still working on getting him to eat only table foods, since he only has 4 little teeth, but he usually only gets one jar of pureed food a day), and saying "bye-bye" in context.  James is still very cuddly when he's tired, but more and more when he's awake, he's not interested in sitting still long enough to get a hug in. 
Recently, we've been working with James on petting the dog nicely.  He tends to pull at Mac's fur, which the dog takes like a champ.  We're lucky that Mac is so forgiving, I think any other dog would have bitten James by now.  I think it will take more work, but we remind him to be "nice and gentle" with Mac and show him what that means.  The cats will still not hang around long enough for James to get any kind of petting in, nice or otherwise.