Super Climber

My daughter loves to climb things.  Even before she was able to walk, she would climb on small things.  She quickly mastered the feat of climbing the stairs and has recently learned, with great efficiency, who to go down the stairs as well.  I knew that she would climb the stairs and that she would probably climb on things, but I never could have anticipated the extent to which my daughter has learned to climb. Unlike her big brother who was not much of climber at all, my daughter is very adventurous when it comes to height.   Beyond stairs climbing, her climbing abilities started out small as she took center stage at her birthday party and insisted on climbing and sitting on all the larger box wrapped gifts.  Shortly after her first birthday, she was climbing and sitting on the chairs to the children’s pottery barn table (which are a little bigger than the other children sized chairs).  She would often get herself stuck and need help getting down.  Then she graduated to climbing on overturned laundry baskets. Soon after that I noticed her climbing on short things in order to climb onto other higher things.  I was shocked to witness her, at thirteen months, use a tupperware container to climb onto one of the dining room chairs.  I tried to prevent her from climbing on higher things by removing anything she could use as a step stool out of her reach.  That worked for a little while.  Now that my daughter is fourteen months, she does not need a step stool to climb onto the dining room chairs.  She just pulls herself up and from there she will climb on the table and play.  I try to keep the chairs pushed in (once she learns how to pull the chairs out we will be in big trouble) so that she cannot climb up but the instant she notices that a chair is pulled out, she races to it and climbs up as fast as she can.  I have also found her on top of the counters in the kitchen.  She takes full advantage of the fact that her brother often leaves chairs pulled up to the sink when washing his hands.  I have also found her climbing up the bookshelves which is probably the scariest thing that she tries to climb.  Needless to say we are going to have a very interesting spring!