Our Little Stairmaster!

Megan has known how to climb up a flight of stairs for some time now. She still lacks motivation and we mostly have to bribe her with a bottle or pacifier to get her to move. However, just in the past several days, she has become aware that the steps go up, but you also go down. For our set of stairs we have two steps going up to a 3'x4' (or so) landing area, then make a 90 degree turn to your left and continue going up. On the landing area is where we've been storing Megan's Fisher Price barn. She loves to climb up the two steps and play but it always made me nervous because you never know when she would just decide to walk or crawl back to the living area or continue going up the steps on her own. Last week we started working with Megan to go down on her tummy and just late last week she demonstrated to us that she can do this on her own! We still should be somewhere near (definitely behind her when doing the big set) but don't need to worry as much. I actually catch her laying down on on the landing and slowly inching herself back, using her toes to find the edge of the step. It's cute to watch her try to perfect her new talent by repetitively going up, down, up, down.

This morning when we were getting ready to leave for the day, I was standing on the second from the top step wanting Megan to walk towards me so I could pick her up and carry her downstairs. Instead, she stopped walking about two feet before she got to me, dropped to the floor, and started using her feet to try and figure out where the step was to start going down. Only thing was that her head was facing the top of the stairs! I helped Megan manuever her back end around so so it faced the right direction and she could go down a few steps before I lost patience and carried her down the rest of the way.

I think it's great how fast Megan caught on to this concept. Her searching for the steps is just the cutest thing ever! Our own little stairmaster!