I Think I Birthed a Monkey With a Sweet Tooth

For the past two weeks, Elizabeth has been climbing the stairs. I turned around one morning, thought she was on the floor at my feet and found her a few minutes later upstairs playing contentedly on the bedroom floor.

I couldn't believe it. The boys were both walking before they mastered the stairs and they were well over a year old as well. It had to be a fluke, I thought, maybe Adam dragged her up there while I was busy blogging cleaning the house.

So I brought her downstairs, deposited her on the tile floor and continued to blog clean when she made a beeline right for the steps.






I thought I'd spot her in case she stumbled, but she didn't need me. She made it up those stairs in less than a minute like she'd been doing it all her life. Everytime she'd make it to the top, she'd stop and clap and laugh at herself. Adam and I spent an entire morning cheering her on. It was cute.

But now. Now it needs to stop.

It is no longer cute.

I am too old to keep huffing up the stairs to retrieve her a hundred times a day.

I keep finding her places she shouldn't be, like my closet in the leftover birthday party bags. You try prying an open pixie stick from that baby. Whoever said "It's as easy as taking candy from a baby" obviously had never done it.



Don't tell me to get a gate either, because she, like the boys, figured out how to knock it down in minutes and the husband won't go for the screw in ones. Something about boogering up the house too much, he'd never be able to patch it, and do we want to live here forever because we'll never sell the house with those holes in the wall. So I continue climbing and fetching while she claps and laughs and I realize she's only ten months old, what in the world is she going to be doing two months from now?



And she's not even walking yet.