Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Baby Proofing

I took the entire 4th of July week off, and one of my projects for the week is to do some baby proofing.

As Amber mentioned previously, Audrey isn't crawling yet, but she can 'scoot' along the floor on her belly using her arms to pull and her knees and feet to push. She just needs to figure out how to lift her belly off the floor and we'll be in business. But in the meantime, she's getting very adept at scooting--so much so that we're really having to keep an eye on her when she's 'loose' on the living room floor.

The first project was a gate at the foot of the stairs. We don't plan on needing this for a little while, but figured we'd might as well do it now.


This was actually a bit of a pain. We bought adapter kits for both sides of the gate because we didn't want to drill holes into our banister. The kits provide the white clamps that attach to the banister without screws, but aren't cheap (about $80 for both). The gate is an Evenflo Plus, which we really like. It swings open and comes off easily for when you don't need it.

The next project was the kitchen cabinets, which turned into a nightmare. We tried four different baby proofing kits and only found one that would actually work on our cabinets. Our cabinet doors are 'picture frame' style, where a thin piece of wood is framed in a thicker wooden frame. I always thought this was the most common type of door, but most of the kits didn't work with it. The kit we ended up using, the only one that actually worked, was also the simplest, and just ties the door handles of adjacent doors together so neither will open.

No comments:

Post a Comment