There is a comedian’s sketch about baby proofing the stove: turn it on high and wait for him to touch it. Now baby-proof: he’s not going to touch it again. Maybe not the best method but effective and effective is probably all that matters in the long run. Our two-year-old survived living in our 1902 home relatively unscathed. Figuring out how to do things to protect him without inflicting damage on the house was a challenge. The baby gate at the top of the stairs is zip-tied to the posts rather than screwed in. The latches for the cupboards required a little modification since they are not designed to work with inset cabinetry.
It’s fair to say that a 2008 apartment that was built as condos didn’t have two-year-olds in mind when they were designed either. We’ve seen a lot of strollers around on the streets but none in our building. Dogs seem to out-number children by a factor of 10. All the door knobs in our house are the standard round type so we installed the Safety 1st covers on the appropriate ones. I bought the leaver covers for the knobs for here but the commercial knobs won’t take the covers. They don’t recommend them for external doors but that would have been preferable to having run down the hall. Thankfully he can’t reach the elevator button, yet, if he was to escape.
We’re having the same challenge trying to do the safety stuff without inflicting damage. Instead of installing cupboard locks under the sink, we’ve got all the cleaners in an upper cabinet. The compression baby gate works well in the hall (though it required and extension piece). We didn’t feel the compression bar that we hung a curtain was strong enough so we did install one end of a closet bar cup and the put the other end of the bar on the window frame so it can’t be pulled down. We hung the magnetic knife rack on the wall in the kitchen out of his reach. We put some temporary hooks up to hang the blind cords up off the floor. It looks like the fittings on the cords are made to be mounted to the wall but the window frames are metal. The balcony has a tall solid railing. As long as we make sure there is nothing he can move to the railing it looks pretty safe. I think it is preferable to having the clear railings we saw in most of the other buildings we looked at but it certainly doesn’t do the view any favors.
Ultimately it is parenting and keeping an eye on him. The pitter patter of tiny feet is a dead give away to his whereabouts most of the time; an advantage of wood flooring!
