… and it’s a lot more challenging than when our first become mobile!

A is eight months old and started army crawling in earnest at about 7.5 months old, shortly after he started sitting up on his own. He’s working on pulling to stand, and I’m kind of wondering if he’s going to skip regular crawling and move right to walking. We lucked out with him still rolling to get around on vacation so I didn’t have to worry about babyproofing on the go, but when we got home I realized that we couldn’t keep going without making some changes in the house.

Before kids our house was fairly sparse in furniture and decor — we didn’t have much, and that was fine! I remember when M was a baby and still only had a few baskets of toys. Those were the days. But as she got older, the birthdays and Christmases and grandparent visits all added up to a lot of stuff. Her possessions expanded as she got older and needed less supervision, though, so babyproofing was an organic process. She was allowed to have toys with small parts as she could handle them, and we mainly kept non-baby friendly things out of sight and out of reach, rarely using actual childproofing products aside from our outlets which are all built-in tamperproof, and anchoring heavy furniture.

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We started with two baby gates that kept her in the living room, then moved one of them so that she could access the hallway and her own room, too (keeping the bathroom, what was once a storage room, and our room off-limits with closed doors). Eventually we let her into the kitchen too, with our door to the basement closed, and finally, gave her full access to the house.

Now, we took on two main tasks to try to make things better for A: we moved his crib down a level so he wouldn’t pull up and out, and we put the living room baby gates back up. But I have the dilemma of babyproofing for A, without making it impossible for M to get around and use her things. As it is now, she’s slowly learning to open the gates, but I’m usually opening and closing them all day for her. I have to watch where her tablet is plugged in because A loves cords, and we’ve talked about the importance keeping her tiny toys away in a box (which is only going to work until he can reach into the toy box and then we’ll have to relocate them again). Even with them away I still worry about stray toys!

And, with A on the move, he hates to be contained. I used to sit him in the playpen or exersaucer when we had to do things with two hands, but he will literally rattle the sides of whatever he’s in, and wail. When I let him out he inevitably tries to eat her shoe, or gnaws on M’s Barbie’s hands, and then it’s a personal affront to her. Mobile babies are exhausting!

I know from experience that this is, like other baby things, ultimately a phase. One day they’ll both be playing with their tiny toys all over the house and I’ll be stepping on Lego bricks and wondering where all of this stuff came from again. Until then, I have a few things I’d like to accomplish:

  • Seriously purge the toys. Then it won’t be as hard to keep track of what goes where!
  • Get our basement in order. It’s been a goal forever now, and I feel like I never have the time, but if I could get the playroom organized and safe, we could easily play down there and split the toys up so it’s less overwhelming, and divvy up baby toys, baby-friendly toys, and baby-unfriendly toys into the basement, the living room, and M’s room.
  • Invest in another gate, to use as we see fit — on A’s doorway, in the basement play room, etc.
  • Continue accepting that my kid eating sand/shoving a shoe in his mouth/going after the cat food is not the end of the world — if it isn’t toxic and isn’t gonna make him choke, I’ve given up for the most part.

What are your tricks for handling a newly mobile baby, especially if you have an older child?