"Because it's there"

Sarah is a CLIMBER. Maybe, instead of the butterfly tunnel I'm planning on giving her for her birthday (party delayed until ??? due to the fact that we're still getting our heads around being home again), I should just take her to an REI and let her have at the climbing wall. 'Cause she'd have a blast, and she might even break some records getting to the top.

She climbs everything — us, her dolly bed, the stairs (up and down — ulp!), and now she's discovered Beth's stepstool that we keep in the kitchen so Beth can help me cook.

Which goes like this: I'm making lunch, and Beth says, "Mama, I want to help you!" and then we go through the process of dragging the stepstool over to the correct counter, and she climbs up on it, and then she gets to "help." This does actually take the form of help when I'm baking — she dumps in the pre-measured ingredients: a teaspoon of vanilla, or cups of flour. More often, though, she just has tastes of whatever I'm cooking. Cheese for sandwiches, say. One of her favorites, for some reason, is salt. Today she got up on the stepstool while I was putting away the groceries, and she ate a bunch of salt without asking, and the sheer quantity she'd consumed made her gag and cough. So maybe she's learned a lesson....

Anyway, Sarah can climb the stepstool too, all the way up to the top and back down. It's only two steps, but they're big steps, and they're open at the back, and I remember being terrified of ladders and steps and such when I was a kid. Not Sarah. Today she discovered that there's a purpose to the stepstool — it lets her get to the counter. So she stood there and played, gleefully, with a container of mixed nuts, a sippy cup, and a few recipe cards. She'll be hitting us up to fund her K2 expedition when she's about nine.