Stair Climbing

In a previous post, I have mentioned that Southern has gotten really good at climbing stairs. He spends a lot of (supervised) time on our stairway at home, and he just loves it. He will go up and down just for fun or will climb the stairs to get to me or to chase the kitty. We have a gate to put on the stairway for safety reasons, and we do put that gate on when we are upstairs so he doesn't accidentally fall down. I never really wanted to put one downstairs though because I think it's fine for him to learn how to climb up and down as long as we're behind him. He would have to learn one day anyway.

Dustin watches Southern for a while each night so that I can take care of a few chores in the bathroom (clean the litter box, pick up dirty clothes, pick out D's clothes for school the next day, etc) and take a shower. He and Southern usually play around downstairs, and there have been a few times that while they are playing, Southern will hear my hair dryer turn on. He knows this means I'm out of the shower. He will take off for the stairs, climb up the whole way, and crawl into our bedroom to say hi to me.

He has been climbing up for awhile now, and about two weeks ago, he learned how to safely go back down. In the past, he would try to crawl down head first. That didn't work out. He would get to a point where he didn't feel safe moving forward or back and would cry out for me to help him. Now he has figured out that he must go down feet first. Yay!

The video clip below shows Southern combining two of his favorite pass times - swiping things from the recycle bin to play with/chew on and climbing stairs :)