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We installed the upstairs baby gate before Babby even figured out how to crawl, but we were slower about installing the downstairs gate.
A friend had given us a great pressure-mounted gate which fit my decor perfectly, back when I was still pregnant. However, it didn’t quite fit the width of our stair well.
My friend said that she had expander pieces for it in her basement somewhere, so we agreed that I would pick them up some time.
Fast forward a YEAR AND A HALF, and I still hadn’t gotten around to it. When he started crawling, though, I told her that I definitely needed to come get those pieces.
And we did! We really did! PH was going to dig out the gate and figure out how to put it together with the expandy bits that very weekend!
And do you know what happened in the meantime?
BABBY DISCOVERED THE STAIRS.
Now, some mothers worry about accidentally drowning their baby. Others fret about losing control of the stroller on a hill. Others have horrible visions of their baby falling from a great height.
I worry about him smashing his big old melon head.
…So I’m not a fan of Babby + stairs.
At first he would just get up on the first step and freeze. He couldn’t get up, couldn’t get down. Eventually he’d topple over backwards and I’d catch him. That wasn’t so bad.
"...Now what?"
After all, my friend the social worker says the bottom gate should be on the third step anyway “so they can learn how to get up and down, but can’t get high up enough to really hurt themselves.”
Okay, so that wasn’t so bad, and we’d put up the baby gate and everything would be fine.
Right?
Then, all of a sudden, Babby figured out how to go up.
"Hey, this just keeps going up! WHAT COULD GO WRONG?"
And boy, did he go up.
"Catch me if you can! No, really... you'd better get ready to catch me..."
And UP.
"I r so smrt"
AND UP.
Of course, removing him from the stairs just made them all the more enticing, and I realized that I had begun a sort of game – “How far up the stairs can I get before Boob-Lady catches me?”
"It goes up and Mommy wants me to stay away. HILARIOUS!"
No amount of distraction could keep him away, and I had no idea how to assemble the dang baby gate. He would clamber up the stairs giggling wildly, and I would come after him.
Of course, I could take him upstairs and just never let him down EVER AGAIN, but he gets bored up there after a while, and a bored Babby is an angry, angry Babby.
Besides, I knew that this was a skill he had to learn sone time. Babies need exposure to stairs in order to learn how to navigate them safely.
So I faced the inevitable. I decided that maybe I should just accept my fate… and change my plan of attack.
I decided not to remark on any upward progress (just stayed close behind him to catch him when he toppled over or slipped), but I made a big fuss over any attempt to get down.
I threw a huge party every time his foot moved DOWN a step instead of UP a step, and within half an hour he had the hang of it, and seemed to have forgotten how exciting UP could be.
Getting down: An even more exciting challenge
Instead he would go up a step or two, and come back down to recieve my wild admiration and excessive applause. He got pretty good at it, really. No more toppling over, no more slipping on the steps. He was the valdictorian of stairs, as far as he was concerned.
As far as I was concerned, I wished I had the dang gate up so I could stop having visions of him smashing his head in.
"Why yes, I AM amazing and clever. Thank you."
Anyway, he went up and down, up and down, and this kept him entertained for a while, and I much preferred it to the mad dashes up the stairs.
And then, after a pause to play with his ball, the devil must have spoken to him or something because otherwise WHY WOULD HE DECIDE TO TAKE HIS BALL UP THE STAIRS?
"Hey, what happens if I bring this toy up with me?"
"Wheee, look at it go! I could do this ALL DAY!"
Suffice to say, we PUT UP THE BABY GATE THAT NIGHT.
Babby isn’t impressed with it, but no obstacle really fazes him for long…
"Stand aside, ladies. This shouldn't take long."
If By Yes 
I’m so glad we don’t have stairs. I’ve seen parents do some creative things to block them off, though. My sister-in-law just moved her couch in front of them until they got a gate up!
Not that we don’t have our own creative blocking going on–I have some fantastically decorative Rubbermaid containers in front of our fireplace.
But hey, it can’t beat my xpen TV set-up, can it? :-p
That last picture is hilarious.
One of the dayhome kids is like that with stairs. You best believe I got a gate installed right some quick. Now he stands at the gate, and bangs on it, and howls.
Two rooms full of toys and four other kids to play with… naturally, he just wants to be charging up the stairs (he hasn’t mastered down yet).
Babbies are weird.
The joy of the challenge, I guess.
Babby is adorable, but he is also a punk.
I agree with you on both counts :-p
Ah, that dog training comes in handy for lots of things, doesn’t it.
Capturing…you can’t fool me!
And shaping!
We don’t have stairs at our place, but there are stairs at our aunts place that we spend some time at… Greyson learned the stairs, even though there is a gate at the top, i wanted him to learn… so we spent some time with the ups and downs… then after he knew how to do them, someone forgot to close the gate… he went to walk down like the rest of us this time, and i watched him go head over heals down, down, down… me, then 7 months pregnant jumped down those stairs after him as fast as a whale can jump down a set of stairs, and my cousin also about 8 months pregnant went “running” up the other set (it was a split level type thing)… i thought it was hilarious, there was 6 other NON PREGNANT people in that house and nobody else went running:) needless to say, in my “delicate state” i bawled, but he was fine.
not trying to bring things down, just a word of caution… knowing how to do something only instills confidence. bubble wrap that little man! casts are hard to deal with on a toddler, especially in the winter. 🙂
ps.
your little monsters face is so expressive! you can tell he’s wanting to just figure out everything, and tell you about it after:)
It’s really funny watching him try to figure out how to back down stairs from the top. He hasn’t figured out how to rotate himself around to lower himself feet first, so instead he just stares down the stairs while shuffling his feet…
maybe try to get him to slide down on his belly… feet first of course;)
Yeah, it’s the “feet first” bit he has problems with :-p
Oh, what a smart choice to just go with it! I have to say that I find the stage when they can almost walk down but not quite to be scarier. I hate when a toddler can’t quite walk down safely, and you wonder if you ought to let them practice, but it seems best to have them crawl down backwards for another month or so. They waaaaaant to walk down, but they just can’t quite do it yet. Toddlers do not understand that one can walk with any length of leg, but little short legs cannot walk down big steps without tumbling. They think that once they can walk they can conquer the world!! (or at least those dratted stairs)
We need to get a hand rail installed for that next adventure! My friend’s 20 month old still backs down the stairs, so hopefully it’ll be another year before I have to face that worry!
Hilarious post and pictures. I miss you both! Babby is so freaking adorable.
We miss you too!