Babyproofing question

cali_girl92504 · January 2011

How much did you do? We have a temporary baby gate that we used with Spike when he was a puppy up at the bottom of the stairs (she doesn't really go near them) and will get new gates this weekend. All our outlets are covered. We're having a tough time with the cabinets. DH doesn't want anything that we have to drill into the cabinets with and the ones that go on the outside don't fit our knobs (they are spaced too far apart). Any ideas? Though DD doesn't mess with any cabinets as of yet, I know she will soon. Did you babyproof your cabinets and drawers?

jen5-03 · January 2011

I don't do anything until it becomes an issue. With DD, we never childproof any cabinets or doors. The kitchen was gated off when we weren't in there, but she never really messed with doors when we were in there (one door she liked to bang, but she didn't pull stuff out). DS on the other hand... my wild child opens all doors and drawers he can reach and has opened at least half my kitchen within 5 minutes of waking up (and my kitchen in this house can not be gated off). So until I can get everything locked down I had to move breakables up high. I just got 3 more latches installed today. I need to get a toilet lock too and hope that DD can open it and that DS can't - that's another thing that DD NEVER played with. DS has already tossed in a toy as the toilet was being flushed and today got in there and opened the lid and banged it down hard on his little hand.

The holes drilled don't show on the front, so I don't care about that. But if you do buy traditional door latches, the safety 1st brand come in 2 sizes. The wide-latch ones are longer than the other ones. My cabinet doors overlap the cabinet frames by a couple inches and with the shorter ones you can just barely cram a finger in there to open it. With the longer ones it's not an issue.

TexasSmith · January 2011

We only did outlets, and a gate at the door of her room, but that was really to keep the cat out rather than her in. She was never a really cabinet opener, so it has never been an issue. The few times she did, I just told her no and that was that.

kat.in.the.hat · January 2011

All we've done is cover outlets. We do have two baby gates, but really just used those to keep her from going out of our sight, not necessarily as a safety measure.

readyforbaby · January 2011

We only covered outlets. We bought some of the cabinet things but he really doesn't try to get into the cabinets so we haven't used them. We live in a 2 story so we bought a baby gate but have never used it. DS is pretty good about not going near the stairs without us. The only other thing we did was to move breakables out of his reach.

Cajun_gal · January 2011

It depends on how curious and adventurous she is with getting into things. Dylan is into EVERYTHING. He's a climber, likes to play with outlets, loves opening and closing drawers and cabinets, loves opening and closing doors, getting into trash cans, etc. He's even tried lifting the lid of the toilet bowl, and he can almost grab door handles now and open them. So... yeah, our house has cabinet locks, drawer locks, outlet covers, most doors stay shut, and we'll soon have door knob covers. I'd just watch and see if she starts to try to get into the cabinets and do locks if you need to. If you aren't constantly watching her in the kitchen, then definitely lock the cabinets that have chemicals in them.

LisaK2b · January 2011

We have:

1) baby gate at the stairs

2) outlets are covered (I really like the ones that closes the outlet for you when you unplug versus having the single plugs that you do yourself)

3) Cabinet locks on only cabinets that have chemicals and other bad stuff (so it's under our kitchen sinks and bathroom sinks) We use the magnetic ones and I like them a lot. The kids never really open the cabinets, but I honestly don't want to risk it (and I don't keep an eye on them at all times).

4) we have some rubber door things on our french doors that lead from our kitchen to the living room to prevent them for smashing their fingers (which was a reactive move from when Emmy did this).

5) we have a brick fire place and so we have the edgers on it since it's a hard sharp edge and the girls can get clumsy. It's near their play area and both girls have fallen a few times but luckily, we had the rubber cushion edges.

6) for certain things like the toy bin shelf thing that can easily tip over if they pulled up using it, we have it anchored.

Just wanted to add that I really wanted to do all of this because I feel more comfortable with them not being around me 24/7. They wonder around the house all the time and I don't always have to follow them. But I do check up on the little one every 10 mins. With Emmy, I rarely worry about her (so maybe it's an every 30 min check up)

savannah11 · January 2011

Um, we covered some of the outlets and used a gate on the stairs for a few months. That's it. We always chose to never let our baby/toddler play alone in a room. As long as I was there to see it I could stop it.

melissa0312 · January 2011

we don't have stairs, but we used to use the baby gate to keep her in the playroom at times.

we plugged all the outlets, which was an absolute necessity with little miss "what will fit in here?".

for the cabinets, we got the thumb latch ones that you have to press the tab down to open the door. first we just did it with the bathrooms and under the sink in the kitchen. we had to add ones to the other cabinets in the kitchen because dd kept pulling out the pots/pans/tupperware. it did require drilling, but its just two holes in the door and two in the cabinet frame. it was a necessary evil because we don't have knobs on our cabinets.

kennifer7 · January 2011

savannah11:
Um, we covered some of the outlets and used a gate on the stairs for a few months. That's it. We always chose to never let our baby/toddler play alone in a room. As long as I was there to see it I could stop it.

i dont chose to let my toddler play alone in any room, but if i am in the kitchen she is at my feet no matter what i do. We have cabinet locks on all of our cabinets (they screw in on the inside) and outlet plugs, but the kind that move and cover the entire outlet when you pull the plug out. not the single covers. if we didnt have the cabinet locks, she would pull everything out. our biggest problem right now is the drawers, she has figured out how to open them and pull stuff out of them. blue painters tape worked for awhile, but she figured out that she can easily tear it off.

BabyLoveTX · January 2011

We have a gate at the bottom of the stairs (man cave is the only thing upstairs).

DD learned to open the cabinets just 2 weeks ago and DH refused to drill holes in the cabinets. So I went super high-tech and installed rubber bands. DD leaves them alone and they are easy for me to get into. There are a few cabinets that do not have another cabinet next to it, so I took breakables out of those.

We also have the outlet covers.

M&M614 · January 2011

We have a 1 story house, so we really haven't used a baby gate. We did with Mia, to keep her contained to one room... but Micah tried to climb it, so we figured it ended up being more of a safety issue than keeping her safe.

We have covered outlets and put on the cabinet pulls.

We have moved breakable and valuable items to higer shelves. I want my girls to be able to explore without being smacked every couple minutes.

Aaaaand, that's about it.

We're pretty relaxed around here. I do, however, whish there was some way to keep Micah from climbing. I just pray a lot.

KNJepp · January 2011

We've done the bare minimum of what has seemed necessary, as it has seemed necessary.

Outlet covers.

Cabinet locks on some cabinets - and need to get some on a few of my bathroom drawers just to keep him from dumping the contents on a daily basis - but there are some cabinets we've left him with access to.

Gates - we started out with one on the lower portion of the stairs (about 6 stairs up), and we now have a swing-gate at the top of the stairs that we used when we're upstairs playing with him, since the stairs are right there in the gameroom/play area. If we didn't have the lower gate, I'd spend all day barking at him/removing him from the stairs, and neither one of us would enjoy that.

kreeper611 · January 2011

We did it as needed. We don't have anything that needs a baby gate and so far he can't open the doors, but he can reach the knobs. The deadbolt is locked 99% of the time in our house.

We did lock almost all of the cabinets (except the tupperware one) but he's learned that if he yanks really hard he can get them open. We didn't lock drawers, though.

We also put the plug covers in and finally got new ones that work better than the super cheap ones because Cooper could get them out.

I've found that babyproofing is a learn as you go thing. Last night I realized C can reach the top of our sofa table...right after he almost knocked over my full drink.

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