Up the stairs

The girls love to climb the stairs. They use a crawling-type motion now (as in the video), but when they were starting to learn they experimented with several adorable strategies. My favorite was Nina's attempt to walk up the stairs. She's far too short to make it work, which she figured out for herself after a few days of struggling. She would stand up facing the stairs and lift a leg up as far as she could, trying to position her foot onto the stairs above.

The girls can now scurry up the stairs very quickly. Although they do technically know how to go down, they will only go down one single stair before changing their minds and crawling back up. For most of the day the stairs are off-limits and behind the gate, but when it gets to be nap time or time for bed, all we have to do is announce that it's "time for bed!" and they enthusiastically walk over to the stairs, climb up, and walk into their bedroom. Here's a video of Nina once she reaches the top of the stairs.