Safety first...baby proofing

Just wanted to write a little blog today on baby proofing.  When a baby is on her way to begin crawling is when the "oh shoot" (or something like that :) ) moment happens.  You suddenly realize that your home is not ready for the small hands and mouths of babes.

My hubby immediately went to Babies R Us and spent way way too much on safety items.  Drawer locks, cabinet latches, baby gates, outlet covers, sharp corner bumper pads for the fireplace and coffee table and the list goes on and on.  Really...we spent way too much.  And had many returns and exchanges along the way too. Some of these purchases have come in very handy and I would recommend highly; others not so much.  Many of the items just didn't work well enough and some just destroyed the furniture/cabinets.

I would recommend highly baby gates for all rooms that you want off limits to the wee one.  We like best the baby gates that screw in to the door frame and can latch and swing open with the use of only one hand.  You will find that when you have a baby, you pretty much need to be able to accomplish tasks with one hand a lot of the time.  These also work great for keeping a baby IN a safe room too! For the holidays I suggest getting the extension play yard type safety gate to go around the Christmas tree.  After the holidays, I took sections (since it comes apart in sections) and literally strapped it onto the bottom of our bookcase so she couldn't climb or get to my books.  It worked great.

Also recommended highly is all corner bumpers for brick fireplaces and sharp tables.  This is mostly needed during the "Look Ma, no hands!" stage of learning to walk.  We prevented numerous could-have-been-bad moments having our brick hearth padded during this stage.

In the kitchen, we did end up using the drawer locks on our important drawers..knife drawer, junk drawer and silverware drawer.  We still have these on because now at two is when she is very curious and tall enough to look inside the drawers. We ended up having to use the latches that stick onto the front of the drawer which does pull off the paint when you take them off and honestly they still aren't totally great, but it was the only kind that would work for our drawers.  Try different ones on yours to get the best one you like before you buy enough for all your drawers.  This includes on your dressers..anything that she can climb by pulling open drawers. Strapping to the wall all tall cabinets, bookcases and dressers is important too if you have a climber baby, to prevent the furniture from falling over on him.

 As for the cabinets, which ours have simple round knobs on...we tried a few safety latches and none really worked that well.  So what we did was go to an office store and buy the big fat rubber bands and we just put three rubber bands from one knob to the next one on facing cabinet doors...in an x.  It works amazingly and cost less than two dollars for all of them! She still can't get into any of the cabinets, maybe if she really wanted to now she could, but the rubber bands have been there so long she doesn't even try any more.  Now this was a huge money saver!

Another rigging that worked great for just pennies and no damage to the furniture:  we have a very nice hutch that has sliding glass doors. We could not find any safety latches that worked without damaging my expensive piece of furniture to prevent her from sliding the doors open and getting to my nice glassware inside.  What we finally found to use, suggested by a very wise friend, is a simple spring tension curtain rod.  I put one at the top of each sliding door to prevent it from sliding open and they work great! Easy for me to remove to get inside the cabinet too.

Now we don't have stairs in our house, but for those who do...please, please, please put gates at the top and the bottom of your stairs.  I have seen more babies, including mine, tumble down a flight of stairs.  It is the scariest thing in the world and causes a lot of serious injuries every day.   I even know of a baby who took a tumble down a flight of stairs while in a walker (which are not recommended to ever use for babies any more), luckily he was fine with the exception of a pretty big knot on his head.

When a baby is walking great and becoming more curious I would also recommend having a locksmith come in and put an out of reach deadbolt on all exterior doors.  When toddlers get close to two they want to go outside on their own; it is better to be safe than sorry and have your two year old walking down the street or into traffic.  For screen doors my hubby attached a simple hook and eye latch lock on our sliders at the top and it works great to keep her from opening the doors when just our screen doors are closed.

Of course, one of the most basic and most important...outlet covers.  Babies do and will stick things into your outlets.  This one is simple and cheap.  The simple kind that just push into the outlet work great.  For outlets used often I suggest getting the outlet covers that turn so you can still use the outlet easily.

Good luck on baby proofing your house.  Remember: This too shall pass.  Before you know it, most of these things can be taken down and you can put all your breakables, magazines and books back on your tables and in your bookcases.  Now at two, I am slowly intergrading my nice decor back into my living space hoping that she won't notice and want to play with them.