Babyproofing the House

Now that he's fully crawling and cruising, Sly is discovering new ways to cause trouble and destruction everywhere he goes. Yesterday, he was playing in the bathroom while I was washing up at the sink. Then he noticed the shiny silver handle on the toilet...

And he flushed it. About five times. The water wasn't refilling in the tank quickly enough for him to do the rapid-fire flushes he hoped for, so he started getting bored with that game.


Looking over his shoulder, he saw something thrilling: never-ending paper!


"Want some, Mommy?"
Flushing again...

Unrolling more paper...


I'm not sure yet of how far I want to go in babyproofing the bathroom. Flushing the toilet is wasteful, but it doesn't hurt anyone. And the toilet paper thing is annoying, but not the end of the world.

My biggest concern is that he will manage to open the toilet lid. So many bad things could happen then! He could fall in head-first. He could play in the gross water with his hands. He could drop who-knows-what into the bowl, and then flush it away. In anticipation of such scenarios, we bought a toilet lid lock last night. We haven't installed it yet. I hope it works without proving too annoying to get open.

If you're wondering why I don't just keep the bathroom door shut, and not let him in at all...well, when Sly's doesn't have me in eye sight, he usually starts crying. He wants to be near me. So anytime I take a shower, dry my hair, put on makeup in the bathroom...he crawls in after me.

We've also been baby-gating dangerous parts of the house. There's a gate at the top of both staircases, and one for the front and back door (since we leave them open all summer with just hanging screen-curtains).

Notice the "cat portals" we had to cut :-)

Small or delicate objects around the house are starting to get moved to higher or safer locations. I feel like the living room and kitchen are both safe areas now where I don't need to keep my eye on him every moment. Of course, every day I'm sure he'll grow in his ability to get into more and more things! So it's going to be an ongoing battle.