Are your babies climbers? It is one of the standard questions between moms. The answers vary based on the child at hand, but my neighbor, Stephanie, answers it best for my girls. If you ask her about my children, she just says I’m raising a couple of mountain goats.

My goats, I mean girls will scale everything they can. If their own limbs will not take them, they use anything nearby to assist: A chair, a box, or a boost off the back of the cat. I try to childproof things, but they can already climb to every high spot in the house. I tried those kid lock things too, but it seems that the girls’ tiny fingers make opening them a cinch. All I’m down to now is keeping a watchful eye and saying a lot of prayers. Plus, if I give them access to what they really want they will skip the really dangerous stuff. Like this recent day, when I found them on the counter absorbed in a box of bandages and a tube of lip gloss, completely ignoring the toaster oven, knives and mini chopper. Phew, that was a close one, lucky me.

Their climbing is not limited to the house. In fact they think, and I tend to agree, climbing is more fun in the great outdoors. In their opinion, the ladders on the playground equipment are for show only. They much prefer to scale the structure itself, simultaneously defying gravity and giving me heart palpitations. Unlike their mountain goat cousins, my girls’ footing is not quite as steady. Once in a while, I hear the telltale thud followed by the cry. Fortunately, the injuries incurred thus far have been easily fixed by a kiss and one of those aforementioned bandages. For those keeping notes, Jaley's stitches last fall were, surprisingly, not the result of climbing, but just plain old bad luck.

In my words, I try to put the kibosh on this habit. But we know actions speak louder, and truth be told I am a bit of a climber myself. At 5’2” much of the world is out of my reach. When I need something up high, I tend to be lazy about finding the ladder. The girls have witnessed me up on railings and balanced on chairs. So they do as I do, not as I say. I guess I only have myself to blame for this climbing tendency.

Until now, this hasn’t been much of a problem. That changed last Wednesday morning. At precisely 5:45AM, I awoke to a voice saying, “Hi, Mommy.” The gears slowly start turning in my head. I think that Sarah is up early, but I’ll just turn on Noggin for 30 minutes, no problem. Then, the gears start turning a bit faster. I realize the voice was not quite right, a bit too high of pitch. I roll over to see Jaley smiling at me and saying, “Hi, Mommy,” again. Now the gears are up to full speed. If your child is part mountain goat, answering the question as to how Jaley got out of her crib is quite easy.

I knew it was coming, but I still wasn’t ready. Jaley is officially out of the crib. My last way to safely contain her is gone. Like most kids, Sarah climbed out of the crib, too. But, she always came right into my room and woke me up. Jaley is a bit more of a self-starter. On Thursday morning Jaley climbed out of her crib again. This time there was no “Hi, Mommy.” By the time I heard her, she was already downstairs and headed for who knows what kind of trouble.

So now we are figuring out new ways to safely contain Jaley while Scott and I are counting sheep. For the moment, we put a door handle cover to keep her from leaving her room. I fully recognize this is a temporary solution; it will only take a week or so until she figures out how to pop it open. Then, we are back to the drawing board. This is just another example that parenting is the ultimate in on-the-job training. As soon as I get it figured out, my children go and grow up and I have to learn the whole parenting thing once again. This week crib climbing, next week…

Gigi appears every Friday on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Gigi at Stroller Lane.