Opening Doors

A few days ago, at 12 months 3 weeks old, Noah learned just exactly how to use door handles to open doors in order to gain access to restricted areas.

This was not a welcome development in our household. 

He now reaches up, pulls the door handle down, and waltzes right into the rooms he is not allowed in.  I pick him up, close the door, and take him across the house, and he proceeds to walk right back over, open the door, and enter the same room.  Over and over.

We have the lever handles on our doors, and the baby proofing things for those types are doorknobs are very hard to come by.  So we are going to have to baby gate the upstairs hallway.  Except that I can't find the kind of babygate I want.  We have another extra tall walk-through gate that's still in the box, but I hate that gate.  We have one at the bottom of our stairs.  It's too tall, it's hard to carry a laundry basket over, the door of it is so skinny and it swings shut instead of staying open.  I don't want to have to maneuver my vacuum and deal with that beast.  That would lead to less vacuuming.  I would much rather use a regular pressure mounted gate that you can put up and take down all day long if you want to.  We have one of those, and I actually love it.  It's from when my husband was a baby, and it's so easy to use.  But we use it when we're downstairs so Noah doesn't get into all of those bedrooms and bathrooms and the laundry room/litterbox room.  All of the other gates that seem similar have really bad reviews.  Erin has one and we have never been able to figure the stupid thing out, so it's never securely attached to the wall.

Honestly, I didn't think my 12 month old would be walking through closed doors.  Seems a tad early to have to deal with that.

8 1/2 Month Pictures

I have so many things I need to post on here and on FB.  I decided to go with here first.  I was just uploading pictures from my camera onto my computer and found some I just really want to post for my own memories.  So, I bestow upon you a plethora of pictures.

Yes, Noah can hang from the top of his gate:

We bought his this Santa hat, size 12-24 months.  He's 8 1/2 months, and the hat barely fits on his head.  I had to shove it on.  I think I'm returning it, but he looks sooo cute, doesn't he?

I was cleaning up after dinner while Justin got ready for his first basketball game of the season.  Noah had just gotten up from his nap, and Justin wanted to know what to do with him.  I told him to take him with him.  I figured when I went in there (the spare bedroom where Justin keeps his clothes) that Noah would be crawling around on the floor.  Instead, he was still in his sleep sack with his soother in his mouth, sitting in the middle of the bed playing with a hanger and his Dad's belt.  It melted my heart.

Little stinker getting into my cupboards:

I want it!

And his little stinker face:

In a track suit:

He started waving this past Saturday!!

I think he looks young here:)

Mommy and Noah at 8 1/2 months... couldn't get a smile from him:

 But we got a wave!!

Baby Proof

As anybody with a mobile baby knows, baby proofing is an ongoing process.  You don't get it all done at once.  Or, you don't if you have a fairly large 6 bedroom, 2 bathroom house.  We started 3 months ago when Noah perfected his army crawl.  And we're still going.

Yesterday we baby proofed our downstairs. Our main floor is mostly baby proofed, but there's no TV except in our bedroom.  Now that high school basketball season is upon us, I'm spending many long days alone at home with Noah (this is a post on it's own).  When my husband leaves before (or just after) Noah wakes up in the morning and gets home after Noah goes to bed (or just shows up for 30 to 60 minutes sometime in there), I need to be able to watch some TV or something some of the time that Noah is playing.  We live in a tiny farm town 25 minutes from the real town (we're looking to move back, but that is ALSO another post of it's own), so it's not like Noah and I have anywhere to GO unless we want to make a full day of it and use my parents' house as a home base for feedings and naps (seriously, running to the mall turns into a 6 hour long affair).  Furthermore, I can't clean my house or anything, because Noah has such bad separation anxiety (also another post on it's own).  So we need somewhere else in my house that we can go besides the main floor.

Despite the fact that Noah has been on the go since 5 1/2 months, our downstairs was NOT baby proofed.  There were visible cords everywhere that he was always yanking at. There were deathtrap coffee tables that he could maim himself on. Whenever we were down there I was constantly pulling him away from things, so he was getting frustrated and I was getting frustrated.  Needless to say, we didn't spend much time down there.

After yesterday, it's about 90% baby proofed. We put a walk through gate up at the bottom of the stairs, since Noah is a stair climber.  We got rid of the dangerous coffee tables; they have found homes in our various extra bedrooms.  We put outlet covers in the empty sockets, and moved furniture around so that all but one of the plugs with cords coming out of it are covered.

We have three problems remaining.

One is the outlet that has this tall lamp plugged into it. I don't know how to cover the lamp and the outlet. We put a couch in front of the other lamp and outlet, but the location of this lamp doesn't really allow that to happen. And it really is the best location for the lamp, lighting-wise.  So far Noah hasn't gone to play with it.  We'll see.


Another problem is that we have a low entertainment unit, so Noah can pull himself up and reach and touch the TV.  The big, expensive, 50 inch LCD TV.  Not something you want a baby pawing at.  We need to find something that lifts the TV up higher so Noah can't grab at the screen. Or we need a new entertainment unit. But getting one tall enough and safe enough would be really expensive.
 
Finally, we need to install cabinet locks on the entertainment unit doors. Noah opens them and pulls out all the wires and chews on them. Not good. We have the locks, but we have to screw them in the doors, so it'll take awhile to do it.
 
I've been wanting to babyproof the downstairs for a long time now, but the way my husband is I actually have to say "We are doing this now.  Let's go."  Saying "We should go babyproof the downstairs" is apparently just a suggestion intended to be ignored.  About 10 times.  And I couldn't do it myself because a lot of the furniture that needed rearranging was WAY too heavy.
 
So now our upstairs and our downstairs family rooms are baby proofed.  So Noah and I have more than one big play room to spend our time in, which helps with the stir-craziness.
 
A baby proofed house is not nearly as pretty.  Our house used to be so immaculate.  We had the right furniture, the right accents, the right decorations, the right arrangements.  Now everything is shoved to the side or put away to accommodate our little Monkey. 
 
I'm not complaining.  I love having the "problem" of our house being less attractive than it used to be because we're blessed to have a baby.  In fact, I think it's ridiculous that some people inwardly judge me for accommodating Noah in all areas of my house.  So many people think you shouldn't have to adjust your entire lifestyle to fit your child.
 
However, I don't think our once immaculate, tastefully decorated house will show as nicely as it would have 9 months ago!