Our house is a death trap

I'm sure that's a phrase that every parent has uttered once their child becomes mobile. And Mommy B and I realized that it couldn't be more true now that Alli is all over the place. We used to spend our days entertaining her by dangling toys over her (back when she was just a lil blob) then plopping her down on her mat to play with her toys (when she could finally sit up on her own). Now, we spend our time making sure she doesn't fall over after she pulls herself up on something dangerous. It has become quite the task because she is still a little uneasy standing up. I'll give you a couple examples...

When I was growing up, my father owned his own glass business. As a result, our house was filled with custom-made glass tables, shelves, showers and mirrors. When Mommy B and I moved south, my parents offered to give us some of these items to begin furnishing our new house. Currently, we have two small all-glass end tables on either end of our couch. They are about 20 inches tall, which is a perfect height for Alli to grab and pull herself up. They also have pretty sharp edges (they are glass, duh) - which makes it a real safety hazard to lil Ru's face since the table top is about nose-high on her.

As beautiful and unique as they are, I have a feeling they could be getting stored away until Alli has steadied herself on those legs of hers. After all, when her daddy was about 6, he had a forehead-first confrontation with a similar glass table while wrestling with an uncle. The conflict cut Dad-E's parent's anniversary date short so they could take him to the ER to get stitches. Needless to say I don't want Alli to be stuck with the same scar I have.

Next, we have our hardwood floors. Our entire first floor is completely hardwood, except for the area rug we have in the living room. Even though we love having hardwood floors, it is much harder to land on than carpet. And since Alli is still trying to get her sea legs, any impact with the hard floor could spell disaster. My biggest fear is that she'll fall face-first and that she's not strong enough yet to stop herself - which could result in another one of Dad-E's injuries as a child... a chipped tooth. Of course, the fact that she already has six teeth in only compounds this fear. However, I'm not about to carpet the entire first floor so that Alli has something softer to land on.

We also have our staircase. The obvious solution to the stair issue is a baby gate - which we have already. I didn't get to install it this weekend, but I have a feeling I'll need to very soon. Come to find out, you really need two baby gates for a staircase in order for them to be effective - one for the top and one for the bottom. After all, what good is a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs when we're playing in her room on the second floor and she decides to take off? And vice versa.


I'm sure I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. Now, I'm not about to dress Alli in bubble-wrap every day to make sure she doesn't hurt herself - but there could be some things getting put away around the house until she can walk around on her own.

She's in that awkward stage right now where she wants to pull herself up and walk around, but just can't put it all together yet. She went through the same phase right before she started crawling, so I know that walking is right around the corner. That's literally all she does now - just crawls around the house, looking for the next thing to pull herself up on. She has the strength to stand for as long as she wants, but many times she forgets that she still has to hold on to something and we have to grab her before she hits the hard floor. I just know that once she starts standing and walking on her own, we'll have to go through another phase of baby-proofing.