Now that my daughter has started climbing, we have had some pretty interesting climbing situations. For the most part, her climbing is safe and provokes little cause for alarm. That changed when she started climbing the stairs. It began with her pulling herself up on the first step and calling after me when I would go up to do some chore. She did not attempt to climb the stairs at this point. Once she got the courage to climb the first two steps (and sit contently for several minutes while playing with something), she quickly gained the courage to go up a few more steps and then a few more.
Up until this point there was never any cause for alarm if I could not see (she is fairly quiet too) my daughter playing while a cooked breakfast (or any other meal or sweet treat). However, one morning while I was cooking breakfast (which is in fact quite a process with eggs cooked two ways, accompaniment meat or toast, and french pressed coffee), my husband, who was still sleeping, suddenly called down inquiring about our daughter. Of course I could not really hear him from upstairs so he came down with our daughter in his arms (perhaps he picked her up on his way into the kitchen, I thought to myself). He then asked me if I had left her upstairs which of course I did not! As it turns out our daughter had climbed all the stairs and then crawled into the bedroom. She then began banging on the bedroom door which awoke daddy. On one hand, I am completely terrified that my daughter climbed the stairs and made her way into one of the bedrooms on her own. On the other hand, I am so thankful that she did not fall down the stairs!
To prevent anymore stair climbing adventures, I have been putting up barricades (made of furniture and such) to prevent her from climbing the stairs in the future…
(To be continued…)