Up

Lizzy has got the fine art of climbing up the stairs mastered. She climbed the whole flight of stairs on Easter with Patrick right behind her egging her on. After a while I got involved too and sat at the top of the stairs saying come to mommy. Yes I know it was an idiotic move on our part to encourage her to play on the stairs, but she was so happy and proud of herself that we just couldn't help it. Unfortunatly she has no concept of how to go down the stairs. A few times she has been climbing with me right behind her and she has just stood up and leaned back. It is nice to be trusted like that, but I fear that she will pull a stunt like that with no one there to catch her. I work every day at teaching her to go down, but when I pull her down like she should do on her own she just zips up a couple more steps. I want to film her climbing so everyone can see how fast she is, but I want to have both hands at the ready to catch her.
I never realised until today that crawling can be graceful. I was out with Lizzy and she was tired of being cooped up in her stroller or confined to my arms so I set her on the floor in a nice clean hallway. She positively glided. She has never had such a long uninterrupted stretch of floor to travel and instead of scrambling along she flowed like water. She was fast too. I never thought I could have a hand in creating anyone so coordinated and graceful. When she is climbing the furniture, and falling off, I know she is displaying my influence. Patrick isn't exactly graceful either though, I guess our clumsiness cancelled each other out.

Terri