...And we're WALKING!?

I hope I'm not publishing this too soon...but Russell seems to have finally decided to walk.  Yesterday, right before FHE, he took about 7 steps unassisted, and then today, he's done that about 3 times so far.  He gets sooo proud of himself.  I'll try to take a movie of it, if he keeps it up.

So we're one week away from a new cast.  I'm nervous/stressed/excited/sad/worried.  Just pick a minute during the day, and it could be anyone of the above.  I'm excited that he's getting OUT of this cast (I'm excited to give him a bath!!!), and I wonder what he'll think of that.  I"m excited also because this cast is getting a bit tight.  Sunday he was so sad.  He screamed and cried all day long.  At first I couldn't decide if he was teething or if the cast was getting too tight (because they both have similar symptoms: irritability, crying, not eating, not napping, etc), but then he decided he was only happy if we were holding him horizontally by the hole in his cast on his back or on his tummy.  That says tight cast to me, since he usually only wants to be upright.  Scott finally cracked a part of it in the front to loosen it up.  We even considered cutting it off Sunday night.  But we didn't feel that would be a good idea.  The longer he goes without a cast, before getting the new one on, the more his back will revert to where it was before the cast was put on.  Shriner's says that we can cut off his cast up to a week early (yes, we're going to cut it off here at our house :0), but the longer we wait the better.  We're thinking we'll try to wait until Friday or Saturday to cut it off.  He's been doing a lot better ever since we cracked it.  Hopefully that did the trick and it'll wait that long. 
I'm sad/worried about the new cast because getting the last one on was so hard on all of us.  I really hope he starts walking again soon after he gets this next cast on.  Being immobile was really hard on him/me.  I think it's going to go a lot better than last time, because his muscles are already strong enough for him to get around in the cast, he's used to the feel of the cast, and because we probably won't get much more correction this time.  That's pretty normal with a second cast, for it to stay the same as the first cast.  So things won't move around as much this time maybe.  It's hard to know what to hope for, because on the other hand, it would be really awesome if we did get even more correction with this cast.
Anyway, just wanted to record where we're at.  Have a good day!