The Adventures of Baby Arthur

by Lincoln

The terror has begun. The days when Arthur didn't move, barely rolled, barely crawled, crawled, shakily took a few steps and paced around only cautiously are completely over. He's officially running (albeit still a bit wobbly!), climbing, tripping, falling over and causing general mayhem. This added mobility has only nurtured his healthy sense of curiosity. He picks up, grabs at, touches, and struggles for anything he can get his hands on! Lately, he's particularly enjoyed pulling his favorite blanket over his head and trying to walk around without being able to see where he's going. We can't our eyes off him!

So what have we done to help save Arthur from himself?

1. Baby Fencing (Surround Play Yard): On the top left - that fence surrounding the TV is actually an unfolded "surround play yard" that's meant for outdoor use. Come to think of it, are we protecting Arthur or are we protecting my prized 50" plasma TV?? The fence has actually come in handy inside the house for many uses, including closing off whole parts of rooms, estimating Arthur's height (it's 30" tall) and enclosing Arthur in a fixed space when we just need some rest from chasing him around!! (We have to rest with him inside the play yard of course).


2. Baby Gate: Preventing toddler ingress to danger areas of the house, like the kitchen. Hot stoves, dirty floors and sharp objects are all bad. The one we have kinda sucks, as it falls of the hinges all the time. Pick one carefully!
   


3. Handle Free Cabinets!: If we can barely open these cabinets, how can Arthur? OK, so maybe I skimped on cabinet handles, but it's worked out quite well so far and I think it looks better too.
   


4. Rubber Floor Padding: Those hardwood floors look awfully painful. This has probably been the most important child-proofing measure. Arthur took a lot of falls when he was figuring out how to walk, and will probably take more falls as he figures out how to run. I have to admit, I'm looking forward to seeing my wood floors again someday.
   


5. Corner Guards: Lots of them and all over the place. Lest Arthur pitter-patter his little head into sharp table corners.
   


6. Window Guards: Duh, as required by law! No picture provided.
   

That's about all we did. It doesn't seem like much. In the end, we leaned towards the wisdom of my West Coast friend Dina. Unlike us, Dina has a large 4 bedroom house that's about 5x bigger than our apartment and has amazing things like.. stairs. With two young boys, there's just no way anyone could baby proof everything! So her method was to rely on teaching. Tell them enough times to stay away or stop touching, and they will.

This has actually worked out pretty well for us so far. For example, Arthur does not go near the toilets, garbage can and he'll stay away from the recycling bin most of the time. In fact, he's learned how to throw things away into the garbage can instead! I'm sure this is because the garbage can is the one thing that we've been dead consistent on for him to stay away from. Unlike the laptop, which he happily slaps at every chance he gets!

Arthur has had his share of falls, scratches, bumps and bruises but he's been relatively unscathed so far. Luckily for us, Arthur will normally come walking after us if we're not within eye sight (for now anyway). As my good friend and father of two Bigs says, "He can learn to be a boy without the head trauma."

Labels: parenting