I always laugh when I think about baby-proofing. Mostly because of that saying “I child-proofed the house, but they keep getting back in!” but also because it is impossible.
Making your home a sanctuary in which no child will ever get hurt/ingest a chemical/swallow a Lego is not going to happen. New mothers, take notes. It will save your sanity!
Sure, as first time mothers, we believe. We are like Fox Mulder. We WANT to believe.
The truth is out there!
We put plastic inserts into our plugs and little cushions on our coffee tables. There’s nothing wrong with that. I have friends whose son tried to escape his crib in the middle of the night and knocked out a few teeth. Most of them were saved. How do you try to prevent that? Giant board on the top of the crib? Try explaining that one to CPS when they come a’calling.
Linus ate deodorant. Sure, my Secret stick does smell yummy, but what the heck? Tater loved the smell of lemon Pledge so much he tried to lick it off the coffee table. I have long since lost track of weird things I have fished out of their mouths and found in their diapers.
Child-proofing is a myth. Toddlers have nothing but time. I have yet to install a device my kids could not master. The child lock to keep them out of the snack drawer? Linus figured that one out. JD mastered the child latch on the cleaning cupboard, hell bent on tasting some Windex. I have had two baby gates straight up break on me.
I bought a tv stand that had doors, with the intention of keeping Linus, and then JD, from pushing buttons.
Ha!
The only way to keep those doors closed is to push the coffee table up against them. Then again, I lost custody of the coffee table years ago. It is has been a train track, a race track, a jumping point, but a place where I could set a beverage or remote control? Again, ha!
JD is so adept at bypassing my attempts to keep him from swallowing chemicals or pushing buttons, I have told myself he might have a bright future in safecracking. Then again, maybe I need to stop watching “Scoundrels”! Since both my husband and I have worked with juvenile delinquents, the odds are good that one of our boys is going to cross the law. Just look at the offspring of pastors and cops.
Yes, I live in fear.
Because just when I cannot remember where I hid the Desitin, here comes JD, sucking on the tube like it is a delicacy.
