Our House - Tighter than Fort Knox?

When my son went down for his nap today, he thought he ruled the roost. When he woke up, he found the place a little less accessible. Mommy and Daddy had toddler-proofed the house.

It is not that we had not baby-proofed before, because we had. He is just so mechanically-minded that he can get past many of our baby-blocking devices. We had to up the ante, and it seems to have worked, at least mostly.

First up was a doorknob cover for the front door and downstairs bathroom. My son has a habit of opening the front door and running outside. We have a front gate that further blocks escape, but we don't want him opening the door at all. He knows how to unlock both the knob and the deadbolt, so we had no choice but to add the cover.

Next up were the stove knobs. He started messing with the gas stove knobs this week, so we put a stop to that with some covers. The last thing we need is a running stove when we light the fireplace. So, we have now achieved gas safety.

The next item we had to address is the wall outlets that we use. The unused ones have the standard plastic inserts, but we use one particular outlet for our laptop power supplies. He has a habit of yanking the cords from the wall, and attempting to put them back in. We are always on top of this, but it is so frequent we needed some peace of mind. I found a box that you attach to the wall which allows for some cord space, and completely blocks the outlet from tiny fingers. Good luck getting the cord out this time, kiddo. :)

My son has a habit of opening the fridge and peering inside for something good to eat. The other day he brought me the milk and a sippy cup. Yesterday he got into the eggs and broke all but two of them. My wife tried to install the fridge blocker, and gave up, telling me it was a worthless tool that doesn't work. I looked at it and got it to work as planned. By this time my son had woken up from his nap. My wife decided to try out the device and boasted to our son that he couldn't open the fridge. He yanked at it a few times, and then looked at the device. Within seconds he calculated what needed to be done and yanked the latch off of the fridge. It was only attached with an adhesive strip, apparently a fact known by the two year old. Score one for the baby.

The baby gate we currently use is fine when we are downstairs and want to keep him downstairs. It has a flaw, but a less than dangerous one if we are downstairs. It mostly keeps him penned in, but when he decides he wants past it, he charges it and manages to knock it down most of the way, clearing the path to climb over it. Again, while downstairs, this is not so bad. The problem is that sometimes we want to keep him upstairs. I worry that he will try his charging routine, and then slide down the stairs on top of the gate. We wanted to install a permanent unit on the top of the stairs to protect us all from the above scenario. It turned out we picked the wrong one, though, having not allowed for the railing interference. We have to get a new one tomorrow.

So, all that being said, we have now protected the front door, the stove, the wall outlet, and the fridge (sort of). We still have the one stair gate, and will be replacing the upstairs one tomorrow. We are pretty satisfied with the security now, but we are always looking to improve.