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Jack, our two-year-old, is a bit of a pill. He’s the kid who gets into everything and is undeterred by traditional parenting techniques of saying “no” and redirection.* He will continue to come back to something he’s not supposed to until he has conquered the obstacle. This was a bit of a problem when it came to our kitchen chairs. We have wood floors and need to protect them from the scraping back and forth of chair legs so we added felt protectors to the bottoms of all the chair legs. This also makes it very easy for chairs to be moved across the floor, especially for a certain child of mine. Jack quickly learned to move the chairs and climb up on them to gain access to things out of his reach – whether that was on the table or the kitchen counter (knives, glass, electronics – oh my!). Enter the bungee cord – or, two bungee cords.

We have a small, square table with one chair on each side and by strategically hooking one end of a bungee cord on a chair and lacing it through the rungs on another and then attaching the other end to the chair opposite the first one we can secure the chairs to the table. Once you repeat this on the other side, all chairs are secured to the table. (In the photo above, you can see the bungee cord hooked to the chairs just below Jack’s armpit.)

These bungee cords also make it easy to stick Jack at the table and not worry about him tipping a chair over when he stands up in it – which he does all the time because, a) he has his daddy’s short legs and, b) he’s a pill. We removed the bungee cords when we had people over for Jack’s birthday (because we wanted to look a little classier and of course allow for adults to sit at the table) and wouldn’t you know he tipped the chair over within minutes of finishing his birthday cake.

We’ve also employed a bungee cord in blocking off the steps of Liam’s bunk bed. We got this bunk bed thinking how much easier it would be for a child to climb up to the top bunk using stairs rather than a ladder. Guess what? It’s much easier for a child to climb up to the top bunk, including a child who doesn’t have enough sense to not fall off the top bunk (Jack, I’m looking at you). So we needed to block off the stairs but the stairway opening was too narrow for normal baby gates. Enter: another bungee cord (plus a baby gate). The picture below is exactly like Liam’s bed if it had matching linens and wasn’t covered with a million stuffed “friends.” Ours has the added feature of a baby gate bungee-corded over the bottom of the stairs. So far this as successfully thwarted Jack but it’s only a matter of time before he figures out how to climb over it using the  base of bottom bunk as a step like his big brother does.

In other child-proofing failures adventures, we have one of those six-section baby fences that can be made into a large hexagonal enclosure or stretched out to block off a section of a room. For Liam, we used this to block off our television and related electronics as well as our fireplace with great success; I don’t think it ever occurred to him to try and go behind it around the open ends. As you can see below, it occurred to Jack and he did it on many occasions until we decided to sacrifice the protection of the fireplace for the safety of just the electronics. Now we have a large rectangle enclosing just the entertainment stand.

Above: baby gate fail; below: baby gate win,
though now we have to watch out for toy tubs being used to gain access to things
(he once stacked them 3-high to try and scale the gate blocking off the kitchen)

Sigh.

*Further proof that traditional methods do not keep our kid down, witness his utter disregard for the fridge lock:

This post is linked up to Works for Me Wednesday at We Are That Family.

• One day you will discover that your precious child has decided to store his boogers on the wall behind his bedroom door. He will be very contrite and will obediently try to clean them off with the supplies you give him but they are stubborn and you will have to step in. They never tell you that scraping dried boogers off a wall is in your job description.
• You will be very sad on Easter morning to discover that you can’t enjoy a marshmallow Peep because you have been calling your children’s private parts their “peeps” since they were learning to talk.
• When you hear other children talking about characters from Star Wars or Cars, you will know exactly who/what they are talking about and will be tempted to correct them when they use the wrong name because you are so used to being corrected yourself.
• You will avert your attention for five minutes and your second born sweetie will have managed to shove 8 (!) DVDs in the space behind the adjustable screen of your portable DVD player, making it so you now have a fancy speaker with which to listen to your DVDs. You will consider not telling your husband this happened because you know you could purchase a replacement and he would never notice, so long as it was the same brand.
• After a particularly fitful nap time, you will go into your 2-year-old’s room to find his face, hands and clothing (along with the crib, sheets and wall) covered in blood. You will not panic but instead go get your phone to take pictures because you know he simply shoved his thumb up his nose – this has happened before.
• You will let your kid’s hair grow because you know soon he’ll have an opinion about its length and you will get not-so-secret glee out of having him do the Bieber (i.e., shake his head around so his hair flies out, watch this for reference – my kid is way cuter)
• You will have to say things like, “We don’t ninja our brother/mommy,” with a straight face.
• You will compliment your children on their excrement habits, in fact, you will cheer for them when they poop in the potty and point out to them what Superman ice cream does to their poop. (Yes, I just used the word poop twice in one bullet point – I am unphased.)
• Your heart will feel so full and you will feel more love than you ever could have imagined. It really is the best thing, even when it is maddening.