Jamie has finally learned to climb the stairs.
I knew this was coming and in some respects I encouraged it. The kid is 14 months old and pushing 30 pounds. He's a brute and his ability to haul his own bulk up the stairs is long anticipated.
There is a slight problem with this, however. The configuration of my stairs and railing don't really permit me to gate the bottom of the stairs. The best that I can do is to gate off the most direct route to the stairs, especially if I want the poor dog to have the ability to get downstairs to ask to be let out or Liam to be able to get to his room.
So, I gated off the stairs as best I could and it seemed to work out for him. That night I was cooking dinner and he was under my feet, dogging my steps, and shoving himself between me and the counters as usual. This is nightly behavior for him so I do my best to ignore it and work around it. Scot came home from work and I was talking to him while I was cooking dinner, ignoring Jamie's antics as usual.
Mid-conversation Scot said to me, "Where's Jamie?"
I vaguely assumed he had toddled off to the family room to bedevil his brother but when Scot and I went looking for him he wasn't there. We went into panic mode and starting running around like crazy people trying to figure out what he'd gotten into.
Guess where he was? Yes. Upstairs.
He had gone through the kitchen, the dining room, and the library to reach the non-gated entrance to the stairway. He then proceeded to climb up and go exploring.
Needless to say Scot and I both had heart failure. Now, I have to keep a ridiculously close eye on him and pretty soon I'm going to have to teach him how to go down the stairs safely so he has half of chance of not breaking his neck. I think I'm going to start a betting pool on how long it's going to take before I find him hanging from the family room light fixture.
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