Baby Gates

The second floor of our house, or main floor, has a circular floor plan shape.  We've been putting up the baby gates to block the girls in the living room, dining room, and kitchen.  Sometimes it works and sometimes not so well.  In my opinion, most baby gates of the tension variety, were designed to hold back one sweet baby, not two determined, leaning, hip checking, twin girls like ours.  So, from time to time, we hear a crash and wait, wait, wait for it... the sound of crying.  This is what happens when our girls muster their way past the baby gate. 

Sabine will crawl to where I sit in front of the computer.  I do like it when the girls come to find me.  They are all smiles as they look up at me, so proud of themselves that they figured out where I've run off to!  But, but, but... they make a big mess.  I keep the diaper bag near by which they dump in mere seconds.  Out come every last diaper, the wipes, the Desitin, and don't get me started on what they do to my packs of Kleenex!  And yes, they've already figured out that I keep yummy treats like pretzels rods in the pockets of their diaper bag.  They don't know how to open the ziploc bag with their fingers yet, this hasn't stopped Miss Marlo from sucking, biting, and chewing to get to the waiting pretzel.

While visiting me as I sit in front of the computer, the girls find plenty of mischief to busy themselves with.  They *love* the printer.  They can punch buttons you know, and it will magically light up and make fun sounds!  Woo hoo!  They've also discovered that there is a low shelf just under the computer desk where I store binders, envelopes, padded envelopes and a telephone book.  Our girls love to empty this shelf all by themselves or in tandem, they don't have much of a preference at the moment. 

When our little Miss Marlo has escaped the baby gate, she now books it for the stairs.  Up, up, up she climbs, lickety split.  On the positive side of things, this can be kinda helpful.  Like when we return home from driving Hugo to preschool.  I park, hop out and unlock the door, hop into the cavity of the van to unbuckle Marlo from her place in the third row, set her down by my knees so that I can unbuckle her sister Sabine from her spot in the second row, then I back out of the van cavity with one girl or the other in my arms and run inside the house and place her on the floor, then back outside to the open van to get the second girl who I pray didn't take a header onto the pavement because she was mad that I made her be second and have to wait, shut the door to the van, shut the house door, and then I can scoop up Miss Sabine to walk upstairs and if I go slowly, Miss Marlo will follow.  I can eliminate one trip down and then back up the stairs!  Maybe my tush is missing this second trip...  It is rather frightening that Marlo doesn't yet know how to descend the staircase on her own.  I'm thinking we could use some carpeting.  At least on the steps down to the first floor.   And a lesson on backing up to the steps and then climbing down, down, down.

Stair Climber

Sometimes I hide from the girls.  Sometimes I get Hugo to play with them downstairs or upstairs or in between, so that I can be elsewhere and get something done.  If they don't see me, all is well.  Once I've been seen all they want to do is climb me.

We encouraged Hugo to figure out climbing the stairs pretty quickly.  We worked on climbing up and then climbing down again on and off for about three days until he was a pro.  Has never had a problem on the stairs.  No falls.  A few slips due to socks on his feet, but no falls.   The boy ran and jumped up and down the stairs and all 34 lbs. of him sound like the heaviest hippo you could ever dream of.

I haven't encouraged the girls to do anything with the stairs AT ALL.  I've wanted them to flat out ignore them.

Well, late this afternoon found me hiding in front of the computer while the girls played with Hugo in what we still call Sheri's apartment, the first floor.  I could hear Marlo calling (grunting) for me.  She makes all sorts of un-lady like noises.  She makes a lot of the same grunting, animal, monster type sounds I remember Hugo uttering.  So, I was hiding and she was calling and before I knew it, the sounds seemed much closer. 

I got up to investigate and found her half way up the staircase!  I know as soon as I hit POST I'm going to get a call from Rachel who has already given me the gate at the stairs lecture... I'm ready for it. 

She looked very cute and very proud of herself.  I ran for the camera, which was right around the corner at my desk, but, when I returned, she was nearly at the top!  She is fast!  Now I gotta get going and show her how to back herself down the steps. 

And I gotta start using the gates. 

I know, I know. 

Even Hugo has hollered at me.