Last Friday, JK was watching Monica while I grabbed lunch with some friends from work, and he had the pleasure of putting her down for a nap. Naturally, she staged a protest. The funny thing is that Grub protests can now officially be classified as "sit-ins."
Instead of laying in her crib and whining until she falls asleep from fatigue or boredom, now she gets up and practices all her new acrobatic tricks.
As you can see from the photo above, she's also perilously close to the top of the crib when sitting up, so JK decided that it was time to drop the crib mattress. Of course, I jumped on the chance to make him do 9 million other things in her room such as dismantling the swing, putting a bunch of crap up in the attic and working on babyproofing her room.
We've basically been tackling babyproofing on an as-needed basis. Partly out of laziness, but mostly because it's annoying. Apparently, everything in your house can be construed as a hazard. Literally everything - I'm not exaggerating! Even if we stopped using electricity, eliminating cords and electrical outlets, we would still have furniture, on which she is going to bump her face/head as she begins exploring. So, unless we empty out our house of everything but ourselves and the baby, it's never going to be perfect.
A friend of mine gave me some really great advice about babyproofing.
She told me that we can take one of two approaches: either we spend all day every day chasing Monica around the house saying "no" every time she gets near something dangerous, or we relinquish part of our everyday living space and cordon off some baby safe zones throughout the house. For now at least, we're going with the latter approach, and our test run of the baby superyard setup in the living room is working beautifully.
While I was packing outgrown clothes to put in the attic, and JK was working on the crib, Monica busied herself by cruising around the bedroom and pointing out some still-existing problems areas to us:
Monica says: Whoooa, open vent! Daddy, weren't you supposed to install this cover before I was born?? Hmm...I wonder what kind of stuff I can throw down here?
Daddy says: I can't find this one...I've looked everywhere...
Mommy says: I just don't understand how you can take seven vents to the garage to paint, and come back with only six. And, of course this one would be the one that's missing! A laundry basket barricade will have to suffice for now.
Monica says: Haven't you guys ever heard of baby gates? Until you get your acts together and buy one, I'll be hanging out in the hallway, taunting the animals and investigating Daddy's smelly gym bag.
Mommy & Daddy say: We're gate shopping for a stable model that can easily be moved from room to room without dismantling mounted hardware. Hang tight and enjoy those gym socks.
Monica says: Outlets! I hear these are lots of fun!
Mommy says: Tricked! Clear covers are already in place, Monica!
After all this cruising around, she collapsed on her quilt to let us know she was ready for an afternoon nap.
Finally, we've decided that we're not really fans of her slamming herself bodily against the rails of her crib when she is staging a nap protest. Hurting herself is only serving to delay the nap process and require me to go in there and settle her down, so we've installed the crib bumpers. I have been watching her when she sleeps and I there is no evidence of her getting herself into a dangerous situation. Plus, now she has something fun and new to occupy her when she first wakes up, and I get a couple extra minutes of sleep :)
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