Stairs with 1-2 Kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the scenario, you have a sleeping infant in an infant seat, a 2.5 yo melting down and refusing to walk, and a double stroller with its underneath loaded with kid stuff. How do you get to the unit? Can you leave the stroller or kid stuff or infant somewhere safe while you carry the 2.5 yo upstairs? You can't carry an infant in the seat and 2.5 yo at the same time unless you're super human, so you'll have to wake the infant to carry them at the same time (if the 2.5 yo will even be cooperative enough to let you safely carry the infant too). The double stroller and kid stuff will likely require two more trips, for 3-4 trips up and down total. Dont forget that the infant will likely be screaming its head off while you make trips to carry stuff because you just woke it up. Meanwhile, the 2.5 yo will be screaming its head off too because you stuck it in a pack and play to stay out of trouble while you carry up loads of stuff.

Same for car trips. You arrive home with a sleeping infant, a 2.5 yo who wont walk, a large diaper bag, and a trunk full of shopping bags (including stuff that needs to go in the freezer). How do you get everything upstairs? Logistically where do you stash the kids while you carry stuff up? Some stair scenarios are easier than others.

Have you been in this situation? I'm the pp who has been in a 4th fl walk up for years. Dd was 2.5 when DS was born. We survived and I'm so glad we stayed bc our apartment is great in so many other ways. There will surely be some "how do I do this?" moments, as there always are in parenting, but the stairs dont have to be a deal breaker.

Agreed. It can be doable. But these scenarios are helpful for a not-yet-parent to understand what people mean when they say stairs are hard with kids. It was meant to help the OP think through the issues. Can they stash a stroller on the first floor? Is there a safe place to ask the 2.5 yo to wait while you haul stuff upstairs? Are the stairs wide enough to easily haul a double stroller upstairs? Can you see the door of the condo from the bottom of the stairs? How many sets of annoying double doors do you have to get through to get from the lobby to your car to stash the stroller? Is the OP okay with grocery delivery? (My husband likes to pick his produce and won't use it.) Alternatively, is OP okay waiting to do shopping with two parents or have one parent stay with the kids while the other parent shops with no kids?

It's also great that many posters had 22 month olds who were comfortable doing the stairs routinely, but it's also completely possible to have a 22 month old who isn't steady enough for the stairs. You get what you get.

So many of these other factors are just as important as the stairs.

Good points, and laying out the challenges can be helpful. But as a walk-up dweller with 2 kids I could also point to a host of "how will you manage XYZ" scenarios associated with suburban living. I would seriously struggle with getting 2 kids loaded into car seats for something as simple as a grocery run! But I realize my my suburban friends don't bat an eye at this, and think my grocery outings sound harder. Having kids is hard! There are so many logistics to consider, regardless of your situation. The point is that if you decide to live in a walk-up you should know that it's totally doable, and that people have and are doing it every day without really thinking twice about it, once they have their routines down.

And I'd speculate that most of the 22 month olds who can't do the stairs can't because they never had to. Barring substantial physical delays, it's something most 22 mo are developmentally capable of doing, if they have the chance to. They may crawl up, but they get there!

[Anonymous]

It's not a big deal. The years when stairs are worrisome go by quickly. We moved into a split-level home when our younger child was 2, and expended a lot of time and energy gating off all of the stairs, only to find that within two months it was no longer an issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's not a big deal. The years when stairs are worrisome go by quickly. We moved into a split-level home when our younger child was 2, and expended a lot of time and energy gating off all of the stairs, only to find that within two months it was no longer an issue.

Don't listen to people who have stairs in a home. Everyone has stairs in a SFH. It is a totally different thing than having public stairs that you have to go up and down. In your home you can dump the stroller by the door, or in a garage or car that is immediately adjacent.

This arrangement would not work for me with one, let alone two young children. But I am admittedly lazy, my DH isn't around a lot, and my kid didn't enjoy the carrier. I am not an "urban" mom or a "put the 18 mo in the back carrier and hike the billy goat trail" kind of person. I am a suburban drive-to-activities- type of person. It just depends what kind of person you are!

[Anonymous]

I think you'll get used to it. My ex has custody 3 day/week and he has always lived in 3rd or 4th floor walkup condos. It's more annoying than no stairs but you learn to live with it.

[Anonymous]

Also, op, look at the rules in the condo building and see if people are allowed to walk out of the car park area. Don’t laugh, some buildings only have doors that can accomidate a vehicle meaning that people are discouraged from walking out of the car area.

What this looks like is that while you can keep your stroller in your car as another poster mentioned, you can’t use your stroller in the sense that you can’t bring the baby downstairs, strap them in and roll on out. You’d have to go get the stroller, bring it upstairs, put the baby in it, and then get it and baby downstairs. You might be able to leave the stroller in a lobby while you go get the baby, either way, it’s way more work both physically and mentally then you are thinking.
People tend to talk of babies like luggage “bring the baby” “take the baby” that sort of thing and so until you have one, many things seem doable.

Talk to the people in your building, the ones who live there. Look around to see if there are kids and talk to people you see with kids.

If you can’t or don’t find anybody, that’s a clue you won’t like living there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also, op, look at the rules in the condo building and see if people are allowed to walk out of the car park area. Don’t laugh, some buildings only have doors that can accomidate a vehicle meaning that people are discouraged from walking out of the car area.

What this looks like is that while you can keep your stroller in your car as another poster mentioned, you can’t use your stroller in the sense that you can’t bring the baby downstairs, strap them in and roll on out. You’d have to go get the stroller, bring it upstairs, put the baby in it, and then get it and baby downstairs. You might be able to leave the stroller in a lobby while you go get the baby, either way, it’s way more work both physically and mentally then you are thinking.
People tend to talk of babies like luggage “bring the baby” “take the baby” that sort of thing and so until you have one, many things seem doable.

Talk to the people in your building, the ones who live there. Look around to see if there are kids and talk to people you see with kids.

If you can’t or don’t find anybody, that’s a clue you won’t like living there.

This is great advice to look around at the people living in the building (no experience with the car/lot/access question). "Kid friendly" in the community sense is probably the best indicator of whether this is something you can manage comfortably. My walk up building is certainly not kid friendly in the strictest sense (narrow doors, tiny foyer to leave our stroller, etc) but there are other kids among the 3 other units in the building, and our block is full of families making it work. There's a community vibe of "could you watch my kid while I run upstairs?" a tolerance for kids making noise as we're coming in, a general acceptance of kids gear clogging up the entryway, etc. The stairs I can handle, but I'd be miserable if I had to constantly worry about minimizing my kids' physical footprint. Which is not to say that we don't go to great lengths to make sure our floors are thickly carpeted, we're minimizing early morning noise, etc. But knowing that we're not the exception in the area is comforting.