Hellobee

Hmm.. I find it easier just to put things away for a while or put up high shelves so you can still enjoy your things. Even if a child never intentionally knocks over things they are clumsy and well, act like children so I think it is better to make your home mostly child safe and comfortable. They don’t suddenly listen perfectly at 24 month. Look at your space. When your child starts pulling up…Then move the stuff up and away. Know the level of what your child can do and move things away accordingly. Imagine the most likely result. If the frame gets knocked down will it break and then you will be out of a frame….or will glass be shattered everywhere and the baby cut? Don’t forget that the kids will also start grabbing stuff while you carry it around the house. Don’t be complacent and leave a vase full of marbles where you carry the baby up the step! I am actually not very safety obsessed….and I think it is because I have made some choices to accept losses or damage of property and removed other things from temptation. Being a parent is stressful enough. It is nice to relax in your own house! …and don’t drop a pen on the floor because that chair will get drawn on!

We started off with created a baby jail in our living room, gating off the entire space and adding floor mats so our crawler could have enough of a free area to roam, while I am able to do chores like laundry, dishes, cooking, without having to constantly worry about what he is doing and where he is going.

That said, now that he is a full blown crawler and cruiser, he protests going into that baby gated area. He’s starting to hate it. So, like, you, I’ve covered all the plugs, moved various floor vases and knick knacks behind closes shelves in the rest of our condo, and generally keep a closer eye on him. I just ordered cabinet locks (the string kind) for the cabinets with items I cannot move anywhere else. http://www.amazon.com/Child-Safety-Cabinet-Latch-Color/dp/B005QU55EA/ref=sr_1_5?s=baby-products&ie=UTF8&qid=1331816313&sr=1-5 We are also moving too so I didn’t want to drill or adhere anything to our kitchen cabinets.

I’m contemplating getting rid of his baby play area alltogether and reclaiming my living room since he no longer has fun there and seems to have fun EVERYWHERE else.

If you are moving soon, I would forego any big changes or purchases. What you’ve done so far will probably work for a short while longer. A baby gate for the stairs would be my only recommendation since you cannot watch the baby every minute.

Even though you’re moving, I would still put gates on the stairs. That was our #1 priority plus covering the outlets. Otherwise, we didn’t do anything else. We like the clean, uncluttered look so our house doesn’t have many knick knacks and such out.

I also don’t want my house to look like it is over run by a child so we didn’t gate off any areas. I have taught her that the living room is off limits since that is our “nice, fancy room”. She will wander in every once in a while and try to play with things, like a fancy chess set that we have out, but I shoo her away quickly and she knows she’s not supposed to go in there.

I covered most of the plugs but, thankfully, my son never really cared for it. I also put up two gates (one that has a little doggy door on the main door for our little dog to get through) and gated him off to the back of the house which is a great room (kitchen, dining, and family room). I also put up a gate on the top of the stairs (pressure mounted so easily removable) for when he’s playing around upstairs. Didn’t need one for the bottom b/c he was usually in the gated area in the back when he’s free roaming. Bought some Kidco magnetic locks and knob locks for the lower kitchen cabinets and bathrooms. If you get the magnetic locks, be very careful when you install them. You have to be pretty precise is all I am going to say! I did leave two bottom drawers in the kitchen for my son to explore that only had take out containers in them. It was great entertainment for him while I was cooking in the kitchen b/c he always wanted to be where I was. It also made him happy that he was able to open something! I was pretty daring and still am by not locking some of the upper drawers that has utensils, foil, plastic wrap, and all that fun and dangerous stuff. But I do believe in teaching them the “no, don’t touch b/c it’s dangerous.” But every child is different and ours is a pretty cautious one for the most part; but he is still a boy.

Now, at almost 3-years-old, I’ve since removed the gates (when he turned 2 b/c of his bday party) and taught him to not go upstairs or downstairs w/o any of us. He’s had a total of one big fall (maybe down like 5 steps) when I wasn’t looking and that’s about it. I hardly close the gate upstairs anymore either. Again, it goes back to us teaching him not to go downstairs w/o one of us beside him. I’m still very cautious though and watch him like a hawk here and there. He is a boy after all!

My advice is to do the stairs, plugs, and lower cabinets and drawers for now. Get things that you can take with you to use in your new house. So pressure mounted gates if it works with your stairs and latches for the cabinets.

Ughl. DS went from a slowpoke army crawl around Christmas to a fast, hands and knees crawling in the last two weeks. (He’s just shy of 1 year). He also pulls up to stand and likes to be into everything but his toys. We have a ranch house, and are gating off the kitchen. It’s a small galley kitchen, so there isn’t really room for him in there anyway. We keep the bathroom and bedroom doors closed unless we are in there, so he pretty much has the dining room and living room as his play area.

So far we have covered outlets, moved all the power cords that we could out of the living room to the spare bedroom/office area, hung our honking flat screen on the wall so it wouldn’t tip and crush him, secured the bookshelf in the living room to the wall and pulled off the picture frames. There is still a lot of non-baby stuff in those rooms, and we’re working on organizing, but it’s stuff that won’t hurt him, like DVDs on the bookshelf. We took everything breakable out of that area, and replaced an end table/lamp combo that was a 10 year old Walmart purchase and was really rickety.

At the very least, it is forcing us to get organized. We are out of town most weekends, so we tend to be cluttered and disorganized at home, which is frustrating for me. I can feel spring cleaning calling my name.

I don’t think you’d need gates for the stairs if you are moving soon, but if they’d be handy in the new place, then it might not be a waste. You can hang your TV on the wall (I got an articulating mount so we could hang ours in the corner of our living room and it was only $80. My dad said it was better quality than his $200+ mount) or they make braces that attach the back of the TV to the wall behind it. We don’t have a coffee table, but I would probably get the corner foam pieces if we had one.

I would really suggest baby gates. Within one month of crawling, LO was attempting the stairs. Also, our upstairs is in general pretty child safe, and I love being able to close the baby gate at the top of the stairs and let LO wander around as he wishes while I get ready in the morning- both of us are happy that way.
I feel like you might as well cover the corners of coffee table- it’s not hard or expensive or time-consuming, and your LO will probably start cruising around and holding onto the table soon.

I am a TOTAL slacker on baby proofing. Definitely the outlets are huge, especially when you see how weirdly attractive they are to babies.

In our house, only the nursery is really 100% childproof. The kitchen is close and our bedroom is close, but mostly we just watch him all the time. I don’t care if he pulls out some pots and pans (he loves the colander) or pulls books off the shelves or grabs some things off my nightstand or out of my closet… I just see him dragging around my belt and keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t put it around his neck or something!!

awww couldn’t you have put away the stuff instead of giving it away?

We have this playyard, which really doubles as a giant toy http://www.amazon.com/Little-Playzone-Lights-Sounds-Play/dp/B00021NX9C/ref=pd_bxgy_ba_img_b . We actually bought two and made a huge baby area so our daughter didn’t feel stifled in it. She loved it b/c there were lots of things to do, and we put a bunch of her other toys into the space so it was like her own playroom. She played mostly in this playyard until she was able to walk, so we didn’t have to worry too much about babyproofing around the house aside from the obvious outlets, chemicals, sharp corners etc. Everything changed after she started walk,ing, though!

Ditto to what @andrea said! We put outlet covers on all the plugs and moved some hazardous cleaning products in higher shelves. And we’re planning on putting up safety gates on our stairs (and covering the railings with plexiglass). Other than that, we haven’t really done much else because we don’t have much clutter to begin with. And most other things that “could” be dangerous, we just tell him “no” and we’re strict about it. He’s eventually learned, over time, what is off limits.

I don’t know about overly childproofing a house. I personally feel that if you over childproof, they won’t necessarily “learn” what is ok and what is not ok to touch/eat/play because basically everything in the house is now fair game. And those are good lessons to learn for real life (going to a friends house, at school, etc). The obvious things I would 100% childproof, but other things? At least for us, we just use our common sense and try to discipline him as much as possible. If I had 4 kids in the house, I would be more conservative since I can’t have my eyeballs on every kid all the time. But we have one toddler right now. The adults usually outnumber him.

Definitely secure your tv. A friend who is a trauma nurse in a children’s hospital ER told me that they see LOTS of injuries due to kids pulling tvs onto themselves. You can wall mount it or buy a gadget to secure it to the tv stand.

When ODD was between 8-12 months, all outlets are covered, we secured the TV and used those spongy thingy for our glass top coffee table. I did use a lock for the under sink kitchen cabinet with cleaning supplies. I also used little rubber knob coverings for sharp edges on the bottom of furnishings. Most think only about the top but for a crawling baby who can slip or lose balance, knocking their head on the bottom edge of furniture is a very possible scenario. Another thing to look out for will be the non rounded edges of countertops. I put rubber knobs on those in ODD bathroom.

But from 15 months onwards, we moved from a single to double stores home. Again I covered all outlets but omitted the locks since ODD understands when we tell her it’s off limits. Everything on the lower cabinets are either non breakables or replaceable so no worries there.

We went back and forth regarding stair gates and in the end, didn’t out up any and ODD s 33 months now! She knows not to go up or down without one of us.

Lastly, she’s never truly left unsupervised around the house. If yes it’s mostly in the family room where there are no sharp corners and electronics are enclosed behind glass doors which she can open but have told her not to.

Our house is already dog proofed, so it’s pretty much baby proofed too. We can’t leave stuff out or the dog will eat it when we leave him alone. And he can open drawers so those have already been child/doggy proofed.

@Cchoi4: Yeah, I feel like he wouldn’t like a “baby cage,” especially if I’m in the other room. We’re at that separation anxiety age right now.

@erwoo: Thanks for the advice. I wish we had a room we could let him roam, but there just isn’t a space like that.

@Lozza: Yeah, I’m thinking I will have to gate the stairs. Even in the couple days since I wrote this, Baby Y has gotten MUCH faster. Amazing how quickly they learn.

@tequiero21: I’m trying to purge stuff anyway, so it was actually better that way! If I’d had any attachment to the stuff, I would have just put it away.

@t_monstah: I wish I could predict how long it will be until he walks to figure out whether something like that would be worth it!

@banana: Agree — I think there’s a balance between doing the obvious stuff and teaching them “no.” Though he’s still a bit young to understand … never too early to try!

@owlmom: Yeah, that will definitely be a priority. Scary.

I’m so glad we didn’t spring for a baby octagon ‘cage’ during this age range. It was such a short time LO could even be contained since she wanted to crawl all over the house and cruise. (Our house was semi-babyproofed..I give it a B grade.) We had to teach no, no right away, at least to get her attention. Also, we used the play n pack in the kitchen when I had to wash dishes. The carriers helped too.