Off to the races

A week and a half ago, Hemi was at the rocking back and forth on hands and knees stage. Then, one day, he figured out how to crawl. Yesterday, he discovered that he can crawl up stairs! Well, that's all just fine, except that the first six steps of the staircase are completely open to the room beside them, and Hemi hasn't quite figured out that whole concept of heights. As in, he doesn't have a clue that he's going to fall before he crawls off the edge of anything. I'm trying to teach him how to slide down the stairs on his bottom, but that scares him, so I'm going to have to figure out another technique.
Anyway, we are going to go get a sturdy old bookcase from my folks this afternoon, and bolt it up to the wall next to the stairs, so as to extend it. It'll probably reach to about the middle of the next to bottom step, and if he falls off there, he's probably going to be more scared than anything else. We need more bookshelves anyway. Oh, well, give him another month and he'll most likely be walking, he's doing the pull up and stand thing already, and once he's up he's comfortable enough to only hang on with one hand. I can't believe how fast he's growing up. He's nine months, by the way.