This morning, as I was cooking breakfast, my little one crawled in. Bored with all of the toys I had laid out for her and deciding that the happening place to be was in the kitchen, she moseyed on in to slyly practice her new skill…opening every cabinet and drawer. Of course, I tried my best to use my toes and knees to hold things closed. Until I turn into Elastigirl from The Incredibles, there was no way I could reach all around while occupied with omelets to stop her. We recently moved into a new home, so we have not yet baby-proofed to the fullest extent. Today, I spent the day researching and shopping to change that. Here are some of the best products I found.
1. Baby Gate: Evenflo Secure Step
One day, my daughter decided that she was going to climb the stairs. Not learn how to climb, but just to up and go. A gate became top priority at that instant. This gate can be opened with one hand (as any parent would insist a gate should do). It did take me a couple of tries when I was shopping to understand how that one-handed operation worked, but once I got it down, it was a piece of cake. I like that this gate doesn’t have anything at the bottom that has to be stepped over. It comes with only 9 parts for installation eliminating the need for templates. The claim is that it can be up and functioning within 10 minutes, and I hope to confirm this to be true. The gate can be adjusted to swing either right or left. I plan to put one at the top and one at the bottom of our staircase.
2. Kitchen latches: Safety 1st Tot Lok
Honestly, these are wonderful locks once they are installed. It’s the installation that’s difficult. Once they are on, though, they are the rock stars of latches. No more squeezing fingers through the small space in the cabinet to push down on the plastic lever. They hold the door or drawer closed tightly until the magnet is used to release the latch. Even my tough tot can’t pry the door open a smidge to wiggle her little fingers into the cabinet. Well worth the couple of bucks over the price of plastic latches.
3. Closing the bathroom door
Yes, there are toilet locks on the market. Yes, it is important to remember to put the toilet seat down so baby doesn’t tip into the toilet. However, I have found that the best prevention is to just keep the door closed. The toilet locks are usually frustrating (never an appropriate time to be dealing with an exasperating lock at the Palace of Neccessity) and just putting the seat down, while a good step, can still result in smooshed baby fingers when they drop the seat on their hands. There isn’t anything for a baby in the bathroom that they should be in there without an adult. It’s a better habit to just keep the door shut.
Until I became a parent, putting foam padding around the edges of our coffee table never occurred to me. Now that I have had friends over with kids learning to walk and learning to fall, I can see the benefits of wrapping up both the table and the fireplace hearth. Our kid will surely not be so graceful to avoid falling and at times those falls will be close to corners. What a great idea to minimize the trauma of a tumble!
5. Christmas tree ornaments
Put the fragile and sentimental ones way up high or away for a couple of years. They’re shiny and sparkly and so much fun to grab and hold and “oooops! crash!” they go. We decorated this year and thought we did a fine job of securing everything. Ha! The Peanut figured out a way to grab a branch that was connected to a higher branch that held one of those glimmery balls. And it took her all of about 47.2 seconds to do so. Whoosh! Off the tree, onto the floor. I suspect we are going to have nothing but paper ornaments until she is old enough to start creating her own clay hand-crafted ones.
It’s so exciting to watch her grow and move about. These tips should get us through this spell in baby-proofing…until she learns new tricks. I just hope we can keep up!
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