Mobile babies...

My girls will be 9 months next week and one of my girls is into everything.. crawling, pulling herself up and starting to let go and stand alone unsupported. My other little one is only sitting but is seriously thinking about crawling soon... we have made our dining room into a playroom that is blocked off.. we have a very wide staircase that I'm not sure how to baby proof and a litter box in our laundry room that I'm not sure how to babyproof unless we shut kitty in the laundry room all day long.. I was wondering... how do you all with mobile babies do it-? I feel like we are shut into our playroom all day long and chasing them in the other rooms of our house is next to impossible! Did you babyproof every room? Do you let your LO's have free reign of certain areas? I feel terrible for my mobile baby because she just wants so badly to explore but I don't know how to keep up with her and I feel like I'm always getting her out of trouble!!! I'm also 8 weeks pregnant with #3 , so my energy level is really low! I really want to make our kitche baby proofed and give them a cabinet to play in that is only theirs... same thing with the bathroom.. I think that is doable but my problem is thinking of them pulling themselves up and falling down hard into something. How do you do it???????

 

Our kitchen, living room and dining room is all open. We have set that up as the safe area with the kitchen gated off but I can still see them. We also have a gate to keep them from going down the hall. We only have a few things in that space I worry about and the rest of the house they do not go in unless I am with them. That works for us with the setup of our house.

 

We completely child proofed our living room and put a gate up between it and our kitchen. Some People think it's cruel but it really decreases the stress of chasing them out of things all of the time. There are no tables with "stuff" on them for them to get into, just the couch, chair and toys. Our TV stand is high and there is plexi glass infront of the dvd and amp so they can't play with those buttons either. In the kitchen we put locks on all the cupboards that I didn't want them playing in and one on the pantry and fridge so they can't destroy those either. Basically they can come and go between the living room and kitchen without getting into too much trouble. For me it was a lot easier to child proof than to tell them no every five minutes when they were getting into things. Best of luck!

 

We are planning to baby proof the whole bottom floor - about 1500 sq ft... so they will have free range... that includes the kitchen, dinning room kitchen, living room and play room... whew, Im not looking forward to it. :youcandoit:

 

You can buy small kitty doors that you install on your door. Just like a dog door but it's smaller for a cat. Check with PetSmart or one of those places. The cat can come and go as they please and you get to keep the door closed. Oh and it's too small for a kid to climb though. lol

My pedi actually recommended I give a kitchen cabinet up to the kids. I just don't have the space to do it though. It's great if you can. I would lock them out of the bathroom though. That's just my opinion. They don't have any business being in there really.

As far as gates and staircase I have seen the large area extendable gates. Kinda like those things at the amusement parks. It all rolls back up into the little pole or they can stretch it out to create lines. Well it's a big gate like that. Check on BabiesRUs or Walmart.com

I have been pregnant and chasing kids - never twins though - but I say if you can afford to baby proof and get anything you need so you don't have to worry or stress as much it's worth it. Being pregnant is exhausting enough without adding the extra stress.

 

I ordered these gates from diapers.com that install on an angle and then got a banister kit to attach them to the banister. That works well for our stairs.

 

We gated and babyproofed our living room which is an open space next to our kitchen. The kids spend 90% of their time in there when at home and it works just fine. A few times a day we go exploring around the house but with our house layout and their level of curiosity, we couldn't have them roaming all day every day. They love their play area!

 

Thank you so much for your replies! It helps to know that we are not in this boat alone! Our problem is that our house is basically one big wide open room.. we have a great room that is completely open to the kitchen and living room and the space is WAY too big to put a gate up.. we'll see how this goes!

 

You'd be surprised--with all the specialty gates out there, you can even gate off a really open room.

 

I agree.. our living room is 13 ft across, and open space to our living room. We use a gate like this. It works GREAT! I can cook dinner and get stuff done and always keep an eye on them.

 

I totally agree. There are so many gates out there. My friend has a living room and dining room that connect and the opening is probably over ten foot. She has a long gate. So it's possible. It might not be pretty but if it works and is less stress for you it's worth it. I always say my house won't be pretty until the kids are a lot older or have moved out.

Another possibilty is buying a couple of these to connect together to make a large play space...

http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=4132571

I used to have one and sold it and now I kick myself. Once the girls are crawling and playing I could set it up in our bedroom or take it outside and let them play without having to worry about them getting into things.


edit because I forgot to proof read first

 

Our kitchen and living room are completely open to each other and there was no way to gate off our kitchen. So all kitchen cabinets have cabinet locks on them (and now that they are older thank goodness for modern appliances with locks too like the ice dispenser and dishwasher!). When our boys were about your LOs age we setup a Summer Infant super playard in the middle of the kitchen and living room, and when they could only crawl around they were content to stay in there. As they got more mobile and could cruise around they didn't want to stay in there for long periods of time. So we put up 2 pressure mounted gates on the 2 entrances into the LR kitchen area (and we raised them about 4 inches for my fat old cat to slither under). We spend 90% of our time in that open area and I wanted them to at least be in our sights and not running down the hallway, etc. We have since made the dining room on the left a play room and a couple of times a day we prop open the gate and let them play in there to give them a change of scenery. We replaced all outlet covers on the first floor with these sliding outlet covers which are AWESOME. If a baby pulls out a cord the cover slides shut over it instantly. And to keep our boys away from the entertainment center and its components we put another play yard gate around it. We have got a LOT of mileage out of metal gates and play yard gates, LOL. I know some parents are able to say NO a thousand times and their LOs eventually stop messing with components, etc, but I don't have the patience for that and had my doubts that my stubborn boys would ever leave them alone.

As for our litter boxes, they are located in a half bathroom off the hallway that we don't use, and we keep the door open just about 4 inches with this door gripper. It's wide enough for the cats to get through but not babies. I guess if the boys were determined and pushed real hard they could get the door open wide enough, but don't usually give them free reign in the hallway unsupervised, and when they do get in the hallway they are more concerned with running up and down it while screaming like banshees and pay no attention to that cracked door

 

We were lucky in that my boys weren't 'normal' babies. They never put anything in their mouth. I kid you not. They didn't go near electrical outlets. They didn't pull on wires, etc. And they were BOYS! :laughing:

That said, they could roam all over the house. Our first floor is hardwood/tile except our bedroom. So when they fell, it was usually pretty hard! I had a SuperYard gate like a pp posted and I used that for a bit. They didn't mind it, until they could move and they wanted OUT. Then dh and I found a gate that we attached to the entrance to our living room. It could then block off the living room from the rest of the house. I put them there if I needed to go up/down stairs, etc.

We had outlet covers over all of the outlets, doors shut, cabinets baby proofed, and that's about it. We didn't go crazy. But like I said, I don't think they were normal either! Annabella on the other hand, we had to watch more carefully!

 

My kids have had free reign of the house. None of my kids were really bad about putting things into their mouths so that was never a huge worry for us. With #4 we put the outlet covers on because he was the only one that ever messed with them. Bathrooms we just shut the door. I've never even used a child lock for the kitchen cabinets. Anything they shouldn't have went into the upper cabinets.

When we had a litter box we tied a string around the door knob and put a nail in the trim and left it just long enough that the cat could fit through the door but the kids couldn't.

 

We have a very open floor plan too so we opted to just make our whole house baby friendly. We did drawer and cabinet locks, and stair gates and other than that we just let them have at it! Now, they have access to everything other than the gate at the top of the stairs that keeps them from coming down when we don't want them to!