Poll: Babyproofing
It looks like Brady is going to be crawling pretty soon now. So, DH and I have started trying to think about what we actually need to babyproof in our house. We don't really feel like we should move all the furniture and make our home into a padded room to protect him (LOL), but there are a few things that are probably necessary. I thought I'd take a poll to see what things you ladies have found to be the most useful and where you got them.
Coffee table - I'm probably going to get the corner and edge cushions since we have a wooden table with corners. One Step Ahead has some that look good. Any others?
Fireplace - We have a gas fireplace that does not have doors on it. Since we won't be using the fireplace any time soon the only real danger I can see is that there are these little pebbles in there that he could pick up and eat. So, what have you done for fireplaces? Should we consider getting doors? What about the screens that cover them? Any suggestions?
Play yard - We probably need one of the play yards so that we can put him somewhere confined while we take the dogs outside, etc. Which ones do you recommend? One step ahead has a few options. Anywhere else?
Kitchen cabinets - DH already bought something for the cabinet. I think they are the magnetic kind that you have to have the little key to open. Not sure because we haven't installed them yet. What did you use?
Furniture/TV - We're going to get some straps to tie down the TV. I'm not sure what other furniture we have that needs to be tied down. If you bought straps or anything like that let me know.
Other than that, I guess we'll get some outlet covers but everything else will probably stay as-is. We'll obviously just have to make sure he is in sight and do our best to prevent him from doing anything potentially dangerous.
Re: Poll: Babyproofing
I think you've got the bases covered. We have a Superyard XT that my parents gave us for Christmas. BEST. EVER. Find one. We still use it today to cordon off our flatscreen and components from curious fingers. Because we have the fence around the TV, we don't have it mounted or strapped down.
For the fireplace, I would definitely get a cover/doors of some sort.
As far as cabinets, we have a couple of the handle latches - but Geneva is SO not interested in what's in them. The only one we really keep latched is the one with cleaning supplies.
Honestly, our house is not baby-proofed fully. We live in a rental home and the cabinets have no knobs. We would have drill into the cabinets and the homeowner would go ballistic.
From experience, things to watch out for:
1. outlet covers
2. oven stove-- this is the one that scares me crazy. If we were able to, I would put up a guard so they can't touch the burners. In our old house, we had baby knobs put on so they couldn't turn the gas. Also, home depot and Ace sell a guard that prevents them from opening the oven
3. toilet--keep door closed if you can.
4. I know some people bolt dressers to the wall, we haven't done this. We just can't bolt everything in the house to the wall, but be aware eventually, he will pull out a dresser drawer and try and climb. Both my brother and I did this. We had a huge dressser fall on us and we survived.
5. Anything small on the ground, he will put in his mouth
6. start putting anything breakable up high.
Because our house isn't baby-proofed fully, I usually keep doors shut and do not allow the kids in the kitchen when we are cooking. I'm constantly checking on them every few minutes.
We put a strip cushion on the fireplace hearth, outlet covers, door handle covers, and that's it. Ava has a gate on her room, but Carter does not anymore.
I'm more of they type that I just tell them they can't be in the cabinets or give them better things to do and it's worked. And they are rarely out of my sight for more than a minute or so to run to the bathroom.
I think it's so different depending on the kid. A locking trashcan has a been a MUST for us. We only really babyproofed the main living areas and just keep doors closed everywhere else. The SuperYard has been amazing for Tess. I think she feels secure in it. It would have lasted all of 2.5 seconds with Emma when she was a baby. Because Tess is so content to stay in her "Cage" (horrible nickname I know but we gotta call it something) that we haven't done too much to the rest of the house.
we have sharp coffee table corners so we did the stick on bumpers.
Our fireplace is open and just has the mesh curtains. We never did anything there and he never really went/goes near it. We've just made it a point to tell him not to touch it. Of course, we've never really had a fire in there but once or twice with him awake and mobile. I want to get glass doors for it, but briefly looked into it and they were more than I wanted to spend atr the time.
We have no play yard. We did have a set of gates that kept him confined to the living room.
We used/use the cabinet locks that you pull the door an inch open then push down to open the rest of the way. They've worked great.
We haven't tied any furniture down, but don't realy have any in any of the main areas that could tumble over.
We put outlet covers practically everywhere. I like ours alot and they're easiler to get out than regular push in ones. These push in but have this little "button" in the middle that you push to pull them back out. Otherwise I found they were hard to pull out without breaking a nail.
Good luck! We just went on an as-needed basis and it's all worked out fine.
Our next step is door knob covers!
Coffee table - We bought the bumper that goes all the way around and is elastic. We did use those sticky ones on our tv stand and the stand is basically ruined. Unless you plan to refinsh the table after, I would not use the sticky ones.
Fireplace - We bought a screen to go in front of it. He was really good about not going in it.
Kitchen cabinets - We bought two kinds of magnet ones but they are a little funky and the doors don't close without a nudge. These are good because he won't figure them out. We often use strong rubber bands.
This is what we're hoping for.
Thanks for all of the ideas, ladies! I think we'll do a lot of these things as we figure out what he does and doesn't try to get into. We may have to get the Superyard or something, though, since there are cases where we have to leave him alone for a few minutes while we let the dogs out. He can already move around quite a bit by rolling and he's getting into everything! LOL!
Mommy to Abigail Elizabeth (11/4/11) and Brady Jasper (7/2/09)
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I've done a lot of babyproofing, b/c my boys are both into everything. We have the lever door handles, so we got the plastic locks that slide back and forth under the handle...that's the only way I can keep them out of rooms I don't want them in, since they can open the lever handles as soon as they can stand.
We have the magnetic locks on the important cabinets in the kitchen, and then we just replaced ALL the outlet covers in the house as soon as we moved in with the kind that slide back and forth (so we don't have to worry about pulling the little thingie out everytime we need to use an outlet and losing it). We also had to replace ALL of the springy door stoppy thingies with the hard one piece kind....both boys would flick them and the white caps would pop off. We have an oven lock on our bottom oven, since Ethan would not leave it alone.
We also found that we had to get the big boxes that cover outlets in use (so that you can have a plug in the outlet but they cannot pull the plug out). When Jack was in the crib, he would constantly unplug the monitor from the outlet below the crib and then I couldn't see/hear him during naps or at night, plus I didn't want him to then put his finger in that outlet. So we have those boxes on a few outlets throughout the house that they could get to.
And lastly, baby gates...we have two staircases (the one to our basement is open), so we have them at the top of both, as well as at the bottom of our main staircase.
I agree that "no" goes a long way, but believe me I still get to say it plenty
Abigail Taylor 09.18.2008
coffee table - we left our wood table (it's like a trunk) alone and we've never had a problem with it.
fireplace - we have a glass cover on ours
We did put a gate at the bottom of our stairs. We also removed everything from the coffee table, side table, and the first 2 shelves of our bookcase. Other then that he has free reign.
Now that Connor is almost 2 we have laxed on the babyproofing. We have the outlets covered, I covered our fireplace with pillows and a nice covering over it to match our decor so it looks like plush seating and many guest have used it during parties. I could not bring myself to pay for a real covering for our fireplace becase it was so expensive. We took out our coffee table which was for the best because it opened up our family room which is our main hang out room. I wish we never bought a coffee place because we plan to never use it again. We used 1 of our play pens as a gate and a toy storage (lol) and a gate near the stairs. We never completely gated the stairs because by the time he would get to the stairs we would have caught him. No gate at the top of the stairs because he is never roaming alone plus I was afraid DH and I would trip carrying him. Also we keep all doors shut. Currently, we don't have any gates. We took the play pen (gate) and regular gate down for a super bowl party and never put them back up. We are not worried because he knows how to go up and down the stairs like a pro. In fact, he goes up and down the stairs regular why we follow ahead, unless we are rushing going somewhere, he's sleep, etc.