Stairs and other ramblings

So, I think I have scared AJU5. Last Wednesday, I let her try to go down the stairs alone. She had mastered the two stairs into the living room about two months ago. She did fine for the first 4-5 stairs. But, then she decided to try and sit up on the stair. Well, it wasn't wide enough. So she tumbled a little bit (I was in front of her, so it was only 2 steps and her head didn't hit anything). Now she won't even try to crawl down the steps. I keep trying to get her to do a few (because, well, eventually she does have to learn), but she just sits there and reaches out to me. This doesn't mean we don't have to be careful around the top of them though. She likes to crawl close to the edge, and the sitting down thing could definitely happen again. Luckily, she is a master at going up. The only issue we have had is wanting to stop and play with the railing. This morning was the first time she had noticed it actually. But, both times she had crawled up, she has tried to stand up at the railing. The first time she actually tried to hold on to the posts and step up. I had to move her to the other side and eventually up a few steps so she would forget about it. The second time, she didn't notice it until she was on the last of the curved steps. So, I just had to move her over and up one step to get her to go to the top.

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AJU5 doesn't have any obvious words yet, but she does do a lot of dadadada, da, dad, and even dad-dee. So, I have been coachging her to say more mamamama, etc. Well, this morning she did it once. Since then, it has been all dadadada... I keep telling her when she does this that Daddy is at work (or something similar) so that eventually she will learn what she is say. I think part of the reason she doesn't have words is because we don't use common nouns a lot. She doesn't take a bottle, and the sippy just comes out once a day. She eats what we eat - meat, veggie, grain/potato - so those words are kind of big. We do say book quite a bit (and she does love her books), but that would be about it other than paci (which she only gets in bed or out of the house), sleepy, dirty, and diaper. Luckily she is a talker none-the-less, so I am not worried one bit.

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Finally, Frema is closing on her house today. In honor of this, here is a picture of me the day we closed on this house - 4 weeks before AJU5 was born. It also shows how the stairs looked when we bought the place -with the wide railing and mauve carpet!