The Safety Dance

I always thought I knew how to childproof a home.

Install a few cabinet locks, knot up the mini-blind cords, and set up a couple gates.

Done.

Then Lily Bird came along.

And my perspective on childproofing completely changed.

I saw a need for high-level security soon after that baby girl took her first steps.

And relocating here:



wasn't an option for us, though an around the clock security staff would be handy sometimes!

Hiring someone from Alcatraz to childproof my home also seemed a little extreme so I had to take matters into my own hands.

At first, I tried various typical safety items that you find at Babies R Us and Target.

My little MacGyver dismantled these in less time than it took me to install them.

I then purchased more expensive and intricate devices that required more than one step to work.  These would buy us a little time but within two months, she had those figured out as well.

And if she was stumped by a particularly tricky contraption, brute strength was then applied.  Baby gates would come crashing down, unable to withstand the pressure.

It was time to bring out the big guns.

It was time for.... Lily-proofing.

This required some way outside the box thinking.

We enlisted the help of handymen much more skilled than ourselves who did some light remodeling of certain rooms in our home.

They built some original things straight from my terrible sketches.

My mom and I designed a one-of-a-kind special safety bed for Lily.  We had someone build it and then some friends come paint and decorate it.

My parents and I just recently installed a wrought iron gate on the side of our house to keep Lily away from the AC units and yard work tools.

My next project?  Hire someone to install a dutch door like this:

in place of Lily's bedroom door.  Of course, then I have to make sure she has nothing in her room that enables her to climb over the door like the children in this photo.

I'd also love to put an old-fashioned screen door on my back door so that Lily can freely go inside the house and outside to the backyard this summer without all the bugs doing the same.

As you can tell, Lily-proofing is an ongoing process.  As she grows and gets older, things that used to work don't anymore.

Trying to stay one step ahead of that girl is a full-time job.

But you know how the experts like Dr. Oz tell us that we need to do things like sudoku or crossword puzzles to keep our brains sharp as we age?

I figure trying to creatively outsmart a 4 year old must count for something.

So why don't I feel any smarter???