Sunday, March 13, 2011

Baby Steps

On March 1st, Xander crawled up his first stair. It caught mom and dad off-guard, but luckily since he only went up the one stair, it wasn't a big deal. He plopped back down on his bum, and seemed satisfied that he had done it. Nine days later, he had grown a lot more ambitious.

Generally speaking, Xander's night time routine is eat dinner, watch a 22-minute Baby Einstein video, change into PJ's, story time, nighttime feeding and bed. But last Thursday, he ate dinner a little early, so mom and dad let him play for a little in the living room before it was time to watch his video. Xander apparently took this as an invitation to climb the stairs again. Up he went on the first stair. Dad slid behind him at the bottom of the stairs, but didn't really think much of it, as he had done this before. Then he climbed the second stair. And here. We. Go.

Immediately, he began to reach for the third stair, and mom and dad realized that this was no ordinary stair climbing. While dad moved into better position to hold Xander in case he fell, mom started to record on the camcorder on her phone. One problem - the camcorder on mom's phone shines a light. Xander noticed this, and turned around to look at the light, and in doing so ceased his ascent. Camera off. Up and up he kept scampering. The staircase is a two-parter, with a landing at the sixth and seventh steps. These stairs are much bigger, and gave Xander ample room to crawl and maneuver on when he reached them, which he did quickly.

Initially, Xander moved briskly past the landing, on to the eighth stair. But then he decided he liked the landing better. He let himself fall off the eighth stair into dad's arms. Once back on the landing, he decided to crawl down from seventh stair to sixth stair and back up again. He did this maybe two dozen times. He seemed to enjoy the fact that the two stairs were wide enough for him to crawl downward from one to the other. He got very good at it quickly, as he was able to keep his arms out in front of him so that his little head didn't bop on the ground on the way down.

After he seemed to tire of this game, Xander got back to trying to make it all the way up the stairs. He climbed the eighth, and then the ninth stair, but at this point he was getting pretty tired. Dad, who to this point had been silently sitting behind Xander so as to not disturb his thought process, went to the top of the stair case and leaned over to encourage Xander to finish the job (mom slid in behind him to catch him if he fell). Xander smiled and laughed, but was clearly tuckered out. The last five steps will have to wait for another day, but they seem like they will be easy prey.

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