One day about a week ago, we saw a neighbor’s kid about two months older than EC open his front door to go inside. “Whew,” I thought, “I’m glad she can’t do that yet.” We have lots of stuff behind closed doors to bathrooms, etc. that are “not for babies” and we’ve not had to worry about cleaning them up.

The next day, she opened her first door. Within another day, she was opening every door in the house. Time to clean up!

When she wakes up from her naps, she sometimes makes like she wants to climb out of the crib. She’s not close to succeeding yet…but just in case, I put padding on the floor where she’d fall, and we’ve started closing the gate at the top of the stairs at night. Because one day, she’ll get out and I don’t want to celebrate that with a fall down the stairs.

A neighbor loaned us a push bike that their daughter doesn’t use yet. It’s a miniature bicycle without pedals, to give kids a chance to learn balance without having to learn pedals at the same time. We brought it home yesterday. By today, little EC is straddling the bike and walking, pushing it in front of her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she figures out sitting and pushing in another day, and if balance comes soon afterward.

On the toilet front, she now sometimes will correctly identify when she needs to poop. She’ll open (!) the bathroom door, go in, and wait for me to get her ready. But she rarely has patience to sit on the potty long enough, so I end up putting the diaper back on and changing it shortly thereafter. Maybe that’ll form a bad habit. But I don’t want to discourage her from running to the bathroom by making it a fight to keep her seated until she goes. Tradeoffs…

Given the right conditions, she can recite the numbers 1 to 20. She can also sometimes recite from 10 to 100 by tens. That’s all recitation at this point…I can ask her how many monkeys are jumping on the bed, and she’ll poke at the page with her finger like she’s counting…but she’s not counting.

I’m also working hard at getting her to recognize land masses on the globe. So far, she’s hit and miss with Africa and Australia, with mostly confusion on all the rest.