Tis’ the season to babyproof

Baby mobility is a funny thing. Andy and I loved watching Bea figure out how to push herself up and wiggle in tiny, uncoordinated scoots across the floor. However, this “bumbling” phase was short lived, and now she’s crawling all over the place. Exciting? Yes! But it’s also exhausting.
Long gone are the days of placing Bea on a blanket and walking away. She wants to explore and gnaw on everything. Unfortunately, the things that she would like to have on her baby buffet are always the most dangerous and disgusting. It’s like she has some sort of internal homing beacon that helps her find the items that could cause the most trouble. She will plow through a pile of sanitized, age-appropriate toys to get to the jagged rock fireplace, Christmas tree lights or Georgia’s most slobbery bones or balls. And she’s a speedy little bug—we have to be on our toes because she can scoot from one end of the room to the other before we can say “neck injury.”
With all this crawling, Bea has also experienced her first few bumps and bruises. I know small crash-and-burns are to be expected when you have a wee one who is scaling the coffee table and head-butting doors, but each boo-boo is still disheartening. Last week she smacked her head on a doorframe, only to calm down long enough to then ram her face into a drawer pull. It was an intense 45 seconds that resulted in her first noggin scrape and a black eye.
Of course this is just the beginning, and I know the next step will involve even more speed, more curiosity and more owies. I also know that Andy and I need to try to get ahead of her and start locking cabinets and shutting doors. Old habits die hard, though, so we’ve been a little slower than most to officially babyproof. We’ve moved breakables out of reach and put away any choking hazards, but the outlet covers and baby gates are still sitting in their boxes. Not because we don’t care, but because it’s hard to imagine what a mobile 7-month old is capable of turning into a death trap. (Apparently, the answer is “just about anything.”)
I’m not planning on going overboard—I want her to be able to survive outside a padded room—but I think it’s high time we bust out the safety gear. Not just for Bea’s sake, but for our own piece of mind as well. Then we can all be a little more gung-ho about Bea’s newfound freedom!