Hellobee

When Miss H became more mobile, we did some basic babyproofing around the house, and thought we were done babyproofing. My friends, you are never quite done! We are not (in my opinion) super overprotective, hovering parents, and we have no intention of wrapping our home in bubblewrap and pillows. But as Miss H went from crawling to hesitantly walking to running around the house grabbing everything in sight, we’ve had to beef up our childproofing.

Case in point – we had a lot of this happening:

Yes, that’s Miss H just lounging on the stairs with the dog. Any time we turned our backs, she was speedily crawling up those stairs. Now, the top of the stairs have a door that we always keep shut. But the bottom of the stairs was unfortunately fair game for her, and she liked to flex her freedom to climb stairs more much than we ever thought she would. We’d initially thought it would be fine as-is and that we’d always be able to keep an eye on her anyway. Umm, no. The kid is fast and can be up those stairs in the blink of an eye.

So this week, we did this:

Miss H isn’t very happy about the new gate, but we are thrilled. Since the area behind her leads into our living room/play area, and the opposite direction leads to her room and bathroom, Miss H can now safely play in the basement. It is amazing! As you can see, it is a rather untraditional/difficult space, so we had to struggle to find a gate to work. We ended up using the Summer Infant Custom Walk Through Gate. It’s extra wide and can work in weird spaces.

We’re actually quite familiar with this gate as we installed one a while back in our master bedroom (another weird/wide space):

With that said, I thought I’d share a few more of our favorite baby proofing purchases.

Cabinet Locks

We have these Munchkin XTRAGUARD Latches all over our house! Now they’re not very discreet, but they do the job, especially on furniture that might not work with a more traditional lock and/or instances where you cannot drill to install a different kind of lock/latch. Here’s a couple of places we’ve used them:

On metal cabinets in our laundry area.

On our oven door!

We also have them on the drawer of our entertainment center and on a 3-drawer cabinet in Miss H’s bathroom. They do the job and technically fit within the grey and white color scheme we have going on in our house.

Also put to good use in our house are the Safety 1st Magnetic Locks. We have these installed on all of our kitchen cabinets that are within Miss H’s reach. These are incredibly robust and you have to have the magnetic key to unlock them. We keep it on the fridge for easy (adult) access. I will be honest that I thought these were a terrible idea when Mr. H bought them, as I thought it would be a huge hassle having to constantly unlock your cabinets. It is, at first. But like anything else you adjust and now I don’t think anything of it. You just slide the “key” over the front of the cabinet until you hear the click. And when they are locked they are definitely locked – Miss H won’t be getting into anything she shouldn’t!

(Note: these have to be drilled into the cabinet doors, so probably not an option if you are a renter. Also, you can set them to an unlocked position if you’re going to be constantly opening a cabinet and don’t want to keep unlocking, but we try and stay in the habit of always having them locked).

Close up of the installed lock on inside of door.

Don’t worry, Miss H is not allowed to play near open cabinets or with the key. This was only for the photo. 

Door Latches/Covers
We have bi-fold doors for our furnace closet/storage area. This is also, incidentally, right outside Miss H’s bedroom door. So it’s a double whammy because it’s a space we want to keep her out of, and she passes it multiple times a day! Enter the Mommy’s Helper Bi-Fold Door Lock. It’s a simple piece of plastic that slides onto the top of the door and keeps it from folding. Want to open the door? Just slide it to the side.

And, to keep Miss H from opening doors, we of course have the super simple door knob covers. (I don’t think these are revolutionary, but the picture of Miss H is pretty cute – even if she does look a tad annoyed).

Beyond all of this, we’ve done the standard stuff: wall-mounts for heavy furniture, outlet covers, toilet locks, foam covers for sharp edges, and stove knob covers (which I don’t even want to really mention as ours aren’t great – Miss H regularly turns up the heat while I’m cooking even though the cover is on!).

As I’d mentioned, we thought we were done babyproofing months ago, but living with an active toddler has brought a wave of newly installed devices in our home the past few weeks – including the new gate, more cabinet latches, more outlet covers, and covering sharp edges of furniture.

It’s seems neverending, but keeping our sweet girl as safe as we can is worth the adjustments in our home. Oh, and the gates are also fantastic for keeping the dog contained as needed – bonus!

Do you have some favorite babyproofing items that have been helpful around the house?