Dear Blog, I missed you.

I'm not sure what has kept me away... perhaps it's Facebook (yeah, that definitely has something to do with it...), but after a blog-break as long as this one I was needing something to be a big-deal before I broke the blog-silence. And here it is:

My apartment is a two level, tall skinny apartment with 15 fairly steep steps. Where the stairs begin is the area that we keep shoes in (right inside the front door) so we have a baby-gate to keep Miles out of the shoes. Today I was working frantically upstairs trying to finish a disk of pictures and I spaced out closing the gate. When I realized the gate was open (because Quinn kept coming up and going down) I figured that as long as the door was open I could hurry and finish what I had started... that way I could still hear Miles and keep an ear out for trouble.

Quinn ran upstairs into my computer room and slammed the door shut. I explained to him that I needed the door to stay open so I could hear Miles playing downstairs. I opened the door and Quinn ran back downstairs. No more than two minutes later, Quinn ran back up and slammed the door again. I told him, "Miles is stuck downstairs and I need to be able to hear him if he needs me. We have to keep this door open." I went over and opened the door again... and there was Miles! My 9-and-a-half month old, who has never been on a stair in his life -and has only been pulling himself up on furniture gracefully for a few weeks- successfully (thank goodness!) used his determination and Quinn's example to climb every step and come to the room that I was in! My baby!! Yay!! (And how terrifying that I underestimated him so greatly to leave the gate open!!!)
We recreated it when Travis got home (Travis followed him up while I coaxed him from the top) and Holy Cow, I was amazed how fast he found his way up!

Here's a pic of my little guy on the first step to give you an idea of his journey: