Baby Proofing

She is officially on the move. And fast.
We had decided a while back that we had to get our behinds moving on baby proofing the house before Maddy started sprinting around. It still felt early to be doing such things, but it's really never too early to make your house safe, right? As first-time parents, the idea of baby proofing seemed completely daunting which is why we probably put it off for as long as we did! Here are some things we realized along the way:

1. Yes, they say this in all the baby books you'll find, but do get down at Baby's level and crawl around (the whole house). You'll see differently at that level and you'll most likely find things to proof you otherwise wouldn't have.
2. Think Baby. They will get into everything. Anything that hangs, flashes, makes noise, is shiny, opens, closes...the list goes on. That placemat you have on your table with the vase of flowers/cup of hot coffee on top? Baby will swipe that right off the table while you're trying (unsuccessfully) to get her strapped into her high-chair. Fail.
3. There is such a thing as overkill. We felt like we didn't want to raise Maddy in a padded room just so she would never get a boo-boo. Our babies, as much as we love and smooch them up, will get lots of bumps and bruises. So go ahead, remove that table cloth and wind up those blind cords. For us, it is not the end of the world if we miss a few furniture edges.
4. Baby proofing seems to be a never ending process. Maddy is learning to move around so well and get into new things each day. When we think we're good, we realize what else needs to be proofed!

The first thing we did was go around our home and cover every outlet with plastic plugs, designed so little fingers find it difficult to get them out. If there were any outlets above counter top level, we opted to not cover them because even when Maddy can stand, they are too high for her to reach (we'll eventually be covering them).

We have blinds for window coverings and unfortunately, we can't remove them because of our apartment living status. We found these great circles that you can twist and the cord is wrapped on the inside, shortening it. For the metal beaded cords, well, they don't wind up so well so we just gathered the end up and clicked the unit shut.

 

Our TV is a flat screen that does have a pretty wide base on it, but we were still nervous about it toppling over onto Maddy if she yanked on it. We purchased two heavy duty straps that could be bolted into both the back of the TV and the stand. The straps can be adjusted in length so if the TV needs to be turned at an angle then it can.

We have a tall bookcase along side our TV stand that can very easily be pulled over. We used Mommy's Helper Furniture Brackets to mount it to the wall. One bracket is screwed into the wall and the other to the back of the bookcase. Then a heavy duty zip tie is put through both brackets and closed.

Our Kitchen/Bathroom cabinets do not have hardware on the outside of them and we also cannot damage the doors (ie. mount door catches on the interior of the door). So, with a helpful hint from my mom, we opted to place Command hooks of medium strength on the outside of the cabinets we needed to keep shut. Then, we placed locks over the knobs. The medium strips can hold the weight of 5 lbs and we thought this would suffice for Maddy until we have our own cabinets.

It is amazing how fast Maddy is catching onto to being mobile. While she is this little and still learning what "no" means, we will proof and proof some more. Eventually she will be old enough to understand what we can touch and shouldn't touch. But then we'll be so, so sad that she is not our tiny Little Miss anymore!