For those of you who have crawling babies and have hard floors what do you do with your crawling little one? Do you block off an area for them or do you allow them to crawl (supervised of course) all over the house. DS started crawling last week and has really begun to move fast now. We have stained concrete floors. They make me so nervous. I know accidents are going to happen but I want to avoid as many as possible. We have thick rugs in the living room, dining room and bedrooms but nothing in the kitchen, entry, hallway or bathrooms. I was thinking about blocking off the living room for him but I really want him to be able to crawl and explore because I feel like he will learn more that way. I was thinking of going to somewhere like Ross and buying some cheap throw rugs that I could just pick up when company comes. Should I worry about this or am I just being too cautious?
Re: Those with crawling babies and no carpet...
We have all hardwood. DS has been crawling since June and I've given up worrying about it. At first I tried to keep him more less on an area rug (entertained by toys). Anymore he's everywhere. He never seems to care---but does get excited at my mom's carpet.
Concrete probably would worry me? More so with the pulling up and cruising. DS has fallen backwards many times and that on concrete scares me a lot (so I don't think you're being too cautious).
We have hard wood floors throughout and a tile entryway. DS has been crawling since the beginning of August and is now working diligently on his biped skills. We don't have any throw rugs, but we did order one of these (CLICKY LINK) for the coffee table.
We ordered that because he had one accident where he bumped his upper lip on the coffee table (we were at our mountain cabin), when he lost his balance while sitting down. We figured rather than spending a ton of money on rugs and such, it'd be better and more effective in the long run to teach him how to do these things.
So now we work with him every day on his "sitting down" skills, and he's really gotten good at it, and he *loves* learning how to do it. He spends most of his time grinning up a storm while we work with him.
We're also working with him to teach him how to go down the stair from our entryway into the living room, I'd prefer him to sit down and swing his feet around, as that will serve him better in the long run, but for now he's pretty good at doing a strange push-up sort of thing as he comes down.
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