Down the stairs!

March 3, 2007

John Thomas started climbing stairs around 9 months old, a few weeks after he started crawling. About two months ago, we started showing him how he could go down the stairs himself backwards, the same way he goes up. And for about the last month or so we have been trying to encourage him to go down the stairs himself. We know he can do it, he has just gotten used to standing at the top of a set of stairs waiting for us to pick him up to bring him down. In the last day or two he has begun going down the stairs on his own, without any prompting from us, or at first begging to be carried down. I am finding this to be a great relief, as he has been able to pull on the baby gate upstairs until it falls down on top of him, for well over a month now. It's great to know that if he all of a sudden becomes a skilled climber, and manages to climb out of his crib without waking us, that he would successfully go down the stairs by himself, walk into our bedroom, and wake us up to play with him.