OUT: Walking; IN: Climbing

Joseph is like soooo over walking. Walking is what 11-month olds get excited about. 13-month olds are like so beyond walking. Walking is so blase (the e needs an accent mark but I couldn't figure that out on blogger), so yesterday, so not what the cool kids are doing these days. Cool kids are climbing, apparently. I thought walking was the last physical feat for Joseph to master - I forgot about climbing.

Unfortunately, Richard and I unknowingly encouraged climbing. A couple times we picked him up and let him stand on a chair in our bathroom. He liked to turn on the faucet and splash around in the water. It was like baby heroine - one time and he was hooked, obsessed, addicted. He will be in a completely different part of the house and all of the sudden it's like a light bulb goes off in his head and he is literally running through the house and into our bathroom. If we don't pick him up right away, he'll attempt to climb the chair himself. Unfortunately for him the chair does not provide much leverage for climbing. His attempts end in frustration and us picking him up....as this video shows:

I was telling my mom about this and she suggested putting our step stool there instead of the chair. That way he could climb and stand himself while playing in the water (with us close by, of course). This worked well...a little too well. Joseph could definitely climb up the step stool. The problem was that this also put him up high enough to attempt to climb onto the counter. It wasn't good enough to stand and splash anymore - he had to be on the counter and in the sink bowl.

This didn't seem incredibly safe to us - if we were holding on to him we would let him walk around for a few minutes. However, one day when Rich was busy with something for 30 seconds, Joseph took off and by the time we caught up with him, he was on top of the stool in mid climb to the counter. We caught him just before the impending fall and likely ER visit that would have resulted. The door to the bathroom is now closed unless we take him in there to play. This creates a major issue for Joseph. When he goes running through the house, only to find a closed door, it's major devastation. We have at least 5 minutes of him laying on the floor screaming and crying.

Luckily for Joseph, he has found something new to climb. The coffee table in the den. He discovered this one day when I walked out of the room for about a minute (sometimes I do have to go to the bathroom). I came back to Joseph standing on the coffee table. I had no idea how he did it...I assumed pure strength and determination allowed him to pulled himself up off the floor. I discovered later in the day, when he did it in front of me, that my kid is also a problem solver. He climbs into his toy basket and uses his toys as leverage to climb on the table. We caught an attempt on video:

Also turns out I am pretty smart and have just been keeping the toy basket far away from the table. Joseph does not appreciate this and is currently in search of new climbing toys. He's given his play house, his crib and his dresser a try but so far none of them have proved to be suitable climbing items.