Stairs? I Laugh at Stairs!

Yesterday I set Ben down in the living room, then walked into the kitchen to use the computer for a minute. When I got done, I peeked into the living room and didn't see him. I walked through there and looked into the dining room and still didn't see him. I was a little concerned when, all of a sudden, I heard noises upstairs and turned to see him walking out of the bathroom, where Rachel had been, and into her room. The little stinker had gone up 7 stairs to the bedroom level!

He had previously just been standing at the bottom of the stairs and fussing if someone was upstairs and he wanted to be up there, too. Yesterday or the day before I had caught him on the first stair, down on all fours and trying to figure out how to get back down. Apparently it didn't take him long to figure out the rest of it, so we're now going to be employing the baby gate at the bottom of the stairs when he's on the middle level of the house.

There's a door to the downstairs level, and fortunately he has not yet figured out how to open doors. I'm thinking we're going to need a latch up high once he does figure it out, until he's steadier on his feet. We moved in here when Rachel was 21 months old, and she never had trouble with the stairs. So I don't think we'll need to use a latch for a very long time, but we'd rather be careful in the meantime, since it's 11 stairs down to the family room, which would be quite a tumble.

In other news:
- Ben now has his third tooth coming in with a fourth about to break through. Teething doesn't seem to be bothering him to quite the same degree, although we are still giving him ibuprofen pretty regularly. He's also very drooly from all the teething.
- Rachel is up and down with obedience and anger. Some days she does really well with listening and obeying, and other days she repeatedly either tones us out or deliberately defies us. It can get a bit wearing at times, but we know that the same qualities that can make her exasperating at this age can also be shaped to help her be a wonderfully strong young woman as she grows up.
- Rachel had her 5-year-old checkup a little early yesterday, since we needed to make sure she was up to date on shots before Kindergarten registration starts on May 4. She needed FOUR shots, and she was such a trooper! It's hard to believe she'll really be a Kindergartener in the fall, but I think she's going to love having school every day and the things she'll be learning there. It's a really great school that mixes K-2nd grade in the classrooms, so she'll also have the chance to form friendships with and learn from the older kids.
- Ben is such a happy, fun little boy. He loves when we lay down on the ground by him and will lean over to just give big open-mouth kisses and roll around on us. He also, unfortunately, loves to grab onto hair and give it a good yank, or reach out and grab with his fingers, to which the deep scratch under my right eye can attest. Definitely a boisterous boyish boy, and it's been so neat to see how he differs from Rachel when she was a baby. He also has about the best baby laugh ever! One of these days I'll hopefully get it on video and post it here.