My Little Tenzing Norgay

And, here's the other PG story I had on tap...

PG is fascinated by the stairs. Given complete freedom in the living room, she'll make a beeline for them, more often than not. For a long while, we tried to keep her away from that area, but M read somewhere that you should let kids explore, so she let PG climb up the first two stairs to the first landing, expecting that to be quite enough excitement for a little baby.

Unfortunately, it wasn't nearly enough excitement for PG, and she proceeded to climb all the remaining stairs to the second floor, pausing occasionally to look through the banister spindles to the living room below. Rest assured that M had her back the whole way up.

I'm a bit of a worrywart when it comes to PG, so I don't like this development one bit, but for now it doesn't appear to have escalated PG's love of stairs any more than what was already there. Happily, she pretty much ignores the stairs from the top end, which is really the more dangerous end of them, anyway. Also, we have started blocking off access to the living room from the dining room by strategic placement of PG's playpen. She can still get through, with a little bit of effort, but that at least buys us some time to stop any unsupervised stair-related shenanigans long before they happen.

I do worry about our inability thus far to find a gate that will fit our weirdly shaped railings upstairs, though. If I haven't found something by the time PG's walking, I'm gonna put up a big piece of plywood and some cinder blocks, per the suggestion of my ex sis-in-law.

Where does one find cinder blocks?