So for about the last month, our baby girl has been crawling all over the place. She’s even walking while keeping her hands on the couches!! It’s CRAZY!! At only seven months old now, we’re very proud of our little mover and shaker. While it’s a ton of fun to chase her around our family room, we’re starting to realize we can’t monitor her EVERY SINGLE MOVE ALL THE TIME. Moreover, once she starts walking, it’s only going to get harder and harder to keep her from getting into trouble. So, it’s finally come time to aggressively baby proof!
As every parent of a newborn knows, the baby proofing thing is more of a gradual process than an overnight setup. Even before we had the baby, we’ve had a schnauzer that loves to cause havoc any chance we give him. So, to keep him in line, we’ve had a couple baby gates up since we moved in. Thus, we’ve gotten used to the whole concept and already have a good chunk of the requisite hardware installed even before she was born.
Now it’s time to add the safety devices that are more designed to keep a baby in motion from getting hurt.
So this is what we’re adding..
1. Furniture corner cushions and cabinet locks
The furniture cushions go on in about 30 seconds with double sided tape….
And transform this regular looking TV stand..
Into this awkward, yet baby safe cushion corner…
Yes, that’s an Expendables DVD that is sitting on our TV stand, so what? That Netflix disc has been sitting in our house since the beginning of August. No plans to watch it. None.
I even added cushions to the front corners of our matching Raymour and Flanigan end tables. Many-a-time have I cracked my knee against the bare corner of these end tables chasing the dog. Never again.
Next, I installed a cabinet door lock. We got these at Baby’s R Us if you can’t tell by the label. For now, I’m only going to install one of them, I’ll save the rest for this weekend. Surprisingly, I didn’t need to pre-drill for my wood screws. By putting enough pressure on the screw with my cordless drill, I was able to screw the fasteners right into the hardwood. Jackpot.
The top latch installs about 1.5″ from the opening of the door. Once that’s in place, the other piece goes onto the door. This took about 5 minutes. Of course I have about 15 more to do!
You’ll have to line up the arm piece with the latch to determine a good position on the door.
Once the lock is installed, I set the height of the arm so it will catch without slipping, but still be easy enough to work without a lot of pressure.
2. Next up are our baby gates. These have been installed for sometime.
3. The electrical outlet covers. Luckily, since our home is new construction, our outlets have built-in baby protectors, so we won’t need to add them. These outlets protect children from shock by preventing anything from being inserted into them except actual electrical cords. It’s kinda hard to even plug a real electrical device into these, forget anything else!
4. Glass protection: TBD. One whole side of our kitchen island is glass cabinet doors. I’m pretty sure these doors are plate glass too and not tempered. Plate glass can break in large sharp pieces if our baby hits it hard enough. That can result in very serious injuries. Tempered glass is most often suggested as an alternative, due to it’s high strength. If it does break, it shatters into hundreds of bite-sized pieces, also not appealing. So we may just end up removing the glass doors and replacing them with solid wood until our kid(s) are old enough to know not to smash them.
So, is there anything we forgot? How did you baby proof? What were your challenges?
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