But now we face the bigger challenge. Yesterday she officially climbed UP the smaller flight of stairs from the family room all by herself! Good job Heidi! Nice skill development! I discovered her practicing this new skill and repeating her performance this morning, with encouragement from her brother.

Why is this a challenge? Only because the “climbing stairs” skill comes months before the “climbing down stairs” skill–which means the former is unsafe when not closely supervised. That means I have to keep a gate at the top of the stairs when upstairs, and at the bottom of the stairs when downstairs. And I only have one gate. And every adult in the house gets annoyed with the gate already, and it’s only up when I’m upstairs and Heidi’s not in her high chair.

Funny how exciting and frustrating one simple accomplishment can be, no?

Maggie, on the other hand, slept through the night in her crib.  She's becoming more mobile, and yesterday we set her down in the middle of the room only to find her at the top of the stairs minutes later.  It's about time to put up the gates to protect her from the stairs!  She's not actually crawling yet, but she's combining rolling with an army-crawl kind of movement where she gets up on her hands and knees, then uses her arms and her leverage to fall in the direction (hopefully) she wants to go, or she pushes herself backward with her arms (the more common method right now).  She doesn't yet have the ability to aim her movement very well, so she might be going for her rattle three feet ahead of her, but ends up ten feet to the right instead, in which case we all get an earful about how irritated she is about it.  She keeps trying, though, and we're just trying to comfort her in the process and keep her safe.