"Look out world! Here I come..."
Houston, we have a crawler.
It all started innocently enough – a shuffle here, a roll there. Then suddenly, my little boy turned 7 months old and within the same day was on the move! I was excited for Ethan as I could see the sense of adventure in his eyes, a whole new world awaiting his little fingertips. And of course, I had sufficiently childproofed our apartment to allow safe travels for a curious baby…or so I thought.
Childproofing principles I suspect are, in large, roughly the same for an apartment as for a house. Cover over powerpoints, block access to certain non-childproofed rooms, make sure toxic substances are out of reach and avoid sharp edges. I began my childproofing project approximately 3 months earlier, by diligently attending an information seminar on this very topic at the local women’s hospital. I returned from the seminar armed with clear childproofing ideas but foolishly believing I had ample months ahead of me to execute them.
Once Ethan began his crawling in earnest, I suddenly realised just how unprepared I was. And Ethan was more than happy to highlight my flawed implementation. We shall refer to a particular incident as ‘Wake-up call Wednesday’ – I left Ethan playing in the middle of the room with his toys and quickly popped into the bedroom for a jumper. I returned no more than 20 seconds later only to find Ethan had crawled across the room and was curiously examining the column heater (previously referred to in this blog). Thank goodness it was off and cool to touch…but my heart sank and my childproofing campaign went into overdrive.
Scrambling about our apartment, I attempted to view the world through the eyes of a curious crawler and took note of sharp edges, dangling electrical cords and head-banging opportunities (NB not the rock and roll variety). Ethan was more than happy to assist me in my survey; I needed only to pop him onto the floor and he would zone in on the most dangerous and what I had thought was well-concealed object in the room. How do they manage that?
Armed with a list of requirements, Cam, Ethan and I set off for the local baby store on Saturday morning, with a priority mission to procure security gates and perhaps a few soft-edged covers for skirting board corners and table legs etc. Childproofing fun fact #1: gates are quite expensive! They are a little fancy, with a swinging door you can walk through, not dissimilar to a pool security gate. Of course, depending on the size of the room, you then add on gate extenders to meet your requirements. And did we want white, grey or charcoal? Hmmm…whatever happened to the wooden gates from my childhood, that you had to practically pole-vault over to escape?
Feeling somewhat disillusioned and fatigued trying to calculate our measured gating requirements, I gave only a cursory glance to the large wall displaying additional baby proofing products. I did observe some interesting safety ideas, most notably, a shield you place at the edge of your stove to prevent things from falling and little hands from reaching.
Thus, we returned home, empty handed but more determined than ever to make our apartment a safe playground for our intrepid explorer. Below are some of my more impressive contraptions:
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