Baby/Toddler Proofing and Product Reviews

This is one of those posts that I originally started this blog for.  It kinda took me a while to figure out what works as far as baby/toddler proofing goes, so here is a little something for those of you who do not want to spend a ton of money or return trips to target/babies r us/walmart/buy buy baby/etc.

Many of you have heard me rave about my baby prison (pictured is the 8 piece pen, I purchased the 16 piece).  The 16 piece pen is large enough for at least 1 baby and 2 adults to sit in.  Several children could fit in there, I wanna say its 7'x7'.  This is perfect because you can break it down and use different configurations to fit different sized spaces.  The pieces pop together easily and do not come apart easily enough for a child to get them apart.  None of the spaces are small enough for hands, fingers, legs, heads to get stuck or pinched.  When it is broken down some of the holes (its a peg and hole system) are the right size for little chubby fingers to get stuck.  We have used the pen in our living room, at the pool, and at Warrior Dash as a way to keep baby confined, but allowing him to play on the ground.  It reduced stress and increased enjoyment for everyone.  I am currently using part of it in the basement to keep him away from areas he should not be in and to prevent him from escaping up the stairs.  I'm using another piece of it to keep him off the area on the deck that gets really hot.  I am about to reconfigure a small pen to use as a "time out" area because we are reaching the age where that will become effective.  I highly recommend this product!  Its the best $300 I have spent!

The second major thing I have had to invest in is baby gates.  Since we are living with my mom for the time being and her house was not exactly baby friendly we needed to find the best way to confine Mikey on each floor (there are 3).  Instead of gating all of the stairs (they are super wide and some have weird angles) we decided to figure out ways to keep him in the baby friendly areas of each floor.  We started with the second floor.  That was pretty easy since its loft style and there are only 2 bedrooms up here.  We just decided to keep the door to my sister's room closed and put a gate at the top of the stairs (The gate at the top of the stairs is actually to keep the cats out...that didn't work).  We went with the Munchkin Extra Tall and Wide gates with swinging door. Its very tall and pretty wide.  It also comes with several extensions, a 1, 2, and 3 bar extension.  This works great for my mom's very wide doorways and stair wells.  We also used the Munchkin Extra Tall and Wide for her oddly sized entrance to the living room.

Munchkin Extra Tall and Wide at the top of the stairs.  3 bar extension is being used.

2 Bar extension that I don't currently need.

Very easy to open and close

3 Bar extension.  Secured very well against a funky post

Munchkin Extra Tall and Wide with 3 bar extension going into the living room (excuse the mess)

Before I measured the spaces I bought 2 Munchkin Easy Close gates.  They were not wide enough for the areas I was looking to gate, but I did find other places for them.  On the main floor of the house there are 2 entrances to the living room so I had 2 places to gate off.  The rest of the main floor is not baby friendly and there are 2 sets of stairs that he could potentially fall down or climb and fall down.  It was easiest just to keep him in the living room.  I used the Munchkin Extra Tall and Wide for one entrance and I used one of my Munchkin Easy close gates for the other.  The Easy Close gate is much shorter and not nearly as wide.  It comes with 1 extension, but I had to use 2 to make it fit the second entrance.  I just took the extension out of the other gate that I had purchased.  It also has a swinging gate which makes adult entry and exit rather easy.

Munchkin Easy Close at the other living room entrance

Being used with two 1 bar extensions

You can see the difference in height between the two Munchkin gates

For the basement, I just use my baby prison, the rest of that level is baby friendly.  My final gate (I purchased 4) was being used to keep Mikey out of the bathroom where the Cat Genie is until I learned that my fat cat could not jump over it.  The gate barely fit into that doorway, it was almost too wide.  After cleaning up LOTS of cat pee and poop the Cat Genie got moved to the basement where we will just shut the door when Mikey is down there and the gate got moved to Maddi's closet (which for some reason has no door anywhere to be found).  So far the gate has kept the cats out of her closet, although I am not confident that they can't jump it.  The gate fits in that space fine with no extension as well.

Munchkin Easy Close blocking off Maddi's closet.  No extensions

The gates are VERY easy to set up and take down.  They have little screws and bolts that fit into the end of the gate,  You simply twist the bolt to make the screw come out until the gate fits tightly.  There are little caps for the feet so to protect the surface you are putting it against.  It comes with a double sided sticky thing so that you can leave the caps in place and move the gate elsewhere.  The stickies also helped to secure the gate at the top of the stairs where its not pushed against a flat surface.

I kind of wish I had bought one of these.  My friend, Franny, has them at her parents' house and they are great for the cats!