Childproofed!

Well, it finally happened, my darling daughter is walking. Not a ton, just a few steps here and there, but now the real fun begins.  See, previously she would sometimes pull herself up and could slowly get around with a modified army crawl type of locomotion. But now, well, she stands up on everything more solid than a stiff breeze, pulls on and chews everything within 36" of the ground, and crawls at approximately mach 2 (my radar gun is only so accurate).  And as the old adage goes, what comes up must come down... often times on it's face, usually at speed, and always accompanied by crying and yelling.  Sometimes she even breaks out the dreaded "Silent Scream" wherein she freezes for about 5 seconds, her face bright red, her eyes screwed shut, her mouth wide open in a huge yell... but no sound comes out.  Well, eventually it does, and that's kind of her "okay, this time it really hurt" signal, but that first silent frozen moment is just horrible... and kind of cute too.

But she's not some one trick pony, she's got lots of skills other than falling down.  She has also learned to feed herself, and likes to practice whenever she can with anything at hand... like lint, dirt, and hair.  Delicious.  She also seems obsessed with crawling fully into the fireplace.  I mean, I guess it does look warm, being all, you know, on fire.  


Well, faced with a clumsy, pica afflicted, self-immolation obsessed toddler, we turned to that bastion of all parenting knowledge... well, er, parenting goods at least. Here's a hint, it starts with a B and ends with an abies Я Us.  On our latest visit we hit the "Safety" aisle hard.  Now, we started off with the easy stuff. You know, the gate that only requires 4 hours and a TIG welder to install, so darling Kiki doesn't throw herself down the stairs, even though we all remember how fun that is. We also bought a jumbo bag of outlet covers, so she doesn't electrocute herself (I know, our daughter isn't going to have any fun). Finally, we topped the cart off with a few devices that prevent anyone without an advanced engineering degree from opening a cabinet, though we did not elect for the PRO models, since, though cute and wonderful, Kiki is not yet a professional.

Having bought only three items from the aisles of safety devices on offer we felt like negligent, careless parents.  But really, I just couldn't bring myself to spend any more on safety items.  I don't think we need to keep Kiki out of the dryer.  Frankly, if she really wants to do the laundry I think we'll be okay with it.    We also didn't buy a toilet lock, since we'll be overwhelmingly thrilled when our daughter decides to start using the toilet, and this would just seem to discourage her.  Besides, the toilet is one thing I really, really don't want to be locked out of.  Ever.  

We also passed on the vast array of corner and edge guards, because, according to the packaging, we are monsters and hate our child.  But, in our defense we did get rid of the most obvious issues in the house (glass coffee table, bed of spikes, tiger).  Other than that, well, I think we just accept that Kiki is going to run into things, probably at speed, and in doing so she will learn that things can be hard... and sharp... and made of tigers.  And eventually everyone needs to learn that, right?