Rut-ro, Time to Toddler Proof

As Scooby Do likes to say... Rut-ro.

In a moment of brainlessness, I left a bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide on the dining room table yesterday and Ada found it this morning. She didn't do anything with it, thank goodness, and Rick caught her sitting in front of it, holding the lid. But that was too close for comfort. I must be much more careful with my toxic household items, even if I am a pregnant scatterbrain with a big blister on my foot. No excuses.

Potentially worse than getting into poisons lying around, today she climbed onto the box our new tent is in, which is currently sitting on the kitchen floor awaiting transport to the basement storage unit. She quickly learned that standing on the box gets her better access to the countertop where she can play with things that are normally out of reach. I moved the glass jars out of her way thinking they would be the most dangerous thing for her to get into in case she dropped them and caused a mess everywhere. As I was at the sink draining her peas and carrots for dinner, I noticed she had a six-inch steak knife in her hand and was waving it at the glass jars I had secured in a basket on the countertop. "Rut-ro" didn't quite cover just how quickly I went from calm to "Holy shit. Give that to me right now." I quickly re-located the knife block to the higher countertop, faced them sideways instead of outward, and slid them as far back from the edge as possible.

Turns out, our baby proofing has officially expired and we now need to upgrade to full on toddler proofing.

She can now open closets, get into cabinets, and open bottles and doors. Medicines with "childproof" caps don't seem as childproof these days. I used to be able to zip up the nail polish bags and feel pretty good that I wouldn't have red and pink stripes on the floors. Now, I think I need to zip them up and put them on shelves above four feet high in the closet. And I finally have a reason to be thankful for the double vestibule doors since she can't quite open them yet do to their weight. I'm also thankful that they provide two more obstacles to prevent her from escaping our house.

To make life even more exciting, she has starting throwing things into the garbage. Mostly things I ask her to throw away or recycle, but I'm wondering where the two sets of baby nail clippers we had have disappeared to. And the fact that she flushed the toilet three times in a row yesterday when I was standing right next to her made me worry that we will soon be getting really friendly with our plunger. Not to mention how I quickly had to stop Rick from showing her that he could use toilet paper as a tissue and then flush it instead of throwing it away since I don't think she'll be able to ascertain when it is toilet paper and when it is a wet wipe or tissue or a paper towel or an actual towel and how toilet paper is the only one of those that is truly "flushable". Her new interest in the potty is great...until you start to think about all of the things she could possibly flush and the repercussions of those flushing actions.

And so I say, Rut-ro. Here we go.

Moral of the story: It is never too early to develop safe habits when you have children. Bad habits are hard to break so get into the childproofing mentality from day one and you'll be glad you did.