Brainstorming some childproofing issues...

[phamos818]

OK, so my daughter will be crawling soon and I'm trying to figure out ways around a couple of lingering issues with babyproofing. Any suggestions you guys might have would be very helpful. Keep in mind that we live in an apartment, so any major physical renovations beyond basically "screw this into the wall" or "doublestick tape!" are not

Comments

[polarbear]

1. Get two longer, thick zip ties and make loops that can hook on the knobs, and then lock together.

2. Get a piece of hard plastic or metal that covers the pushbutton and then duct tape it to the handle.

3. Install those plastic coated hooks that screw into walls or ceilings and are used to hang things. Screw those into whatever the stools sit in front of and then hook the legs with them.

4. Duct tape. But I'm not really sure what you're worried about there.

[phamos818]

Duct tape pretty much does solve everything! (For the coax, I'm mostly just worried that she'll trip and fall and land face first on it, and be horribly scarred for life. Because I am totally sensible and reasonable.)

[cintinue]

Heh. Jackson walks and we haven't done any of this!!

[phamos818]

Yeah, I know, I'm being overprotective. But given that I've been asking my husband to bolt the TV to the wall for five months and he still hasn't done it, I figure I should start working these things out now and eventually she'll just go off to college and all I'll have done is put those plug covers in and that'll be fine.

[clafount]

Does the baby spend a lot of time in her room? I mean...awake time, obviously :) I'm just asking because I was surprised at how little we needed to baby proof once Jane actually got mobile. I found that she spent very little time in her room at all, and zero time unsupervised, so I never really worried about babyproofing in there

[phamos818]

Yeah, we don't really need to babyproof much in her room, since she isn't in there most of the time. None of these things are super urgent, I just have a lot of them in the back of my mind. Babyproofing the living room is obviously the harder task, but at least I've started on that a little and we have a plan of attack. (Basically, we just need to bolt all the shelves and the TV to the wall. Done!) And then we're going to gate off the kitchen and bathroom, and keep our bedroom door closed.

Do you think this post would garner ridicule if I posted it at P101?

[clafount]

Oh no. They should have some good baby-proofing advice there,

[cintinue]

We've taken to the same approach. We found that he likes to unplug things, so we bought special boxes for the outlets he is drawn to, but leave the others alone unless he's never there unsupervised (the hallway).

Of course, our issue is more that he wants to crawl on top of his toys.

[ndykman]

As for 4, you can just unscrew the plate, unscrew the coax if possible and place in the box. If not, see if there is enough slack to cut it, and put a blank plate there.

[phamos818]

Someone on Facebook also pointed this out to me -- I feel like a dumbass for not realizing that it probably screwed out under the faceplate.

[ndykman]

Don't. The cable company wants you to think the cable is magic.

By the way, that's one expressive kid you have there. Seems like you have your hands full.

[finch500]

Well, being the worrywort I am, I have a different concern. Have you baby-proofed your cat?

Wrt scars: My niece has a scar on her cheek that she got while I was watching her. Doh! Her and her brother were playing by the fireplace and he grabbed a piece of fire wood and started flailing it around. He got her in that little place between the lips and the nose. Or was it on the cheek? I can't remember now. I think she still has the scar, though she has three kids of her own now.

R