climbing

What do you get when you cross a mountain goat with a monkey?

...give up? A Ladybug.

This child is afraid of nothing and regularly climbs everything. Especially troublesome is how she can climb onto the kitchen counter. She grasps the edge with her hands and walks her feet up the side. Then she can throw her weight up over the side and voila! nothing is out of reach (treats, electronics, fragile items, a hot stove, etc.)

She also loves to climb the back of the couches, the bookshelves and the headboard to my bed. It's rather startling to walk in and find her perched on top if the metal scroll work five feet above the ground.

The other day we went to a new park and Butterfly immediately scrambled up the climbing wall. (then she barreled down the slide into a clover patch and discovered the flowers growing there. Together we made flower necklaces, bracelets and tiaras and she declared herself "the flower princess".) Ladybug watched her sister on the climbing wall and ran over to follow. The problem was the two foot gap between the ground and the first foothold. I tried telling her the wall was too big and redirecting her to the stairs but she refused. She stubbornly explored and experimented until she got a good grip with her hands and manager to muscle her way onto the wall by pulling herself up. She maneuvered her way up the wall (with some very impressive climbing techniques) and pulled herself onto the platform at the top. She cheered for herself and then did it several more times. She even waited patiently for a five year old boy who struggled and finally gave up, unable to pull himself up the way she did before she had to show him how to do it.

My response? "Go baby!" Daddy's response? "when can I take her rock climbing?"