Saoirse's Primal Journal page 193

[Saoirse]

are there post-market oven locks? this is an older oven, so there isn't a built-in lock. i air dry oven-safe dishes in the oven sometimes, so it's my general habit to look in the oven before preheating. i guess i should look a little harder next time.

[naiadknight]

Yep.

[Saoirse]

hmmm...thanks. i wonder if there's one that gets better reviews. the exterior of our oven gets pretty hot, and the little guy has a knack for disassembling or circumventing most "child safe" things.

i looked at some of the other products; even the higher rated ones were broken by kids or malfunctioned due to heat. i'll stick with vigilance and "this too shall pass."

[naiadknight]

Your call. Just thought I'd throw it out there. Thankfully, my folks didn't have that problem. In their lovely little house from the 40s, the oven is above the stove, at about head height for me. The most they had to worry about with Pat was her getting under the sink and playing with the Saran wrap and aluminum foil (my parents bought it from Sam's in 30 lb boxes each.) After dropping the box on herself several times, she left it alone.

[Saoirse]

yikes. those serrated edges are nothing to laugh at.

we generally don't bother with childproofing stuff. most of the baby locks just make that object more enticing, and the few cleaning products i have are non-toxic. i tie the chairs to the table so he can't climb on the counter, and he's still unable to open doors (though i might buy a few of those door handle covers if it comes to that). oh, and he understands that the oven is hot by touching the side of it. it really does get hot to the touch, but not hot enough to cause any serious damage. so he would come close to the hot oven, i would stop him with a warning "HOTTT!!" then he'd touch the oven, give me a pained look, and i would repeat the warning sympathetically, "yes, it's HOT!" So he gets it. he just plays with the oven when it's cold.

[naiadknight]

My parents really didn't either. The cleaning supplies were over the fridge, the breakables were in the upper cabinets. The worst they had to worry about was Cassie turning on the water to play with it, and it didn't happen often enough to be a worry. A child gate between the kitchen and the den solved a lot of the possible issues. (Den had washer, dryer, litter box, dad's workbench, liquor bar, and computer)

[Saoirse]

we had baby gates until he learned to climb them. i could invest in another style of gate that drills into the walls and has vertical slats, but I think he's just going to have to learn to behave eventually so why bother. just another 6-12 months of this baby stuff, and i'm done until grandkids.

[naiadknight]

Yeah, by the time we could climb them, we weighed too much to climb them (my parents never did fully tighten them down on top, so a kid near the top of the gate would fall with the gate on top of them.) And usually by the time we picked ourselves up, mom was in there with us to fix the gate, swat us, and send whoever it was back to play.

[Mud Flinger]

Smart kids look at child proofing devices as puzzles and they mostly slow them down a little. We used to have one on the front door that most visitors could not open until our son showed them how The toilet lock was another adventure for guests.

Luckily, he never tried to escape on us like some kids do. He also was never tempted to "sample" the cleaning supplies or medicine cabinet. Now at 4yo, I hope we are past that stuff!

[magicmerl]

we had baby gates until he learned to climb them. i could invest in another style of gate that drills into the walls and has vertical slats, but I think he's just going to have to learn to behave eventually so why bother. just another 6-12 months of this baby stuff, and i'm done until grandkids.

Heh. Grandkids.

We had various baby-proof things for kid #1, but none of those would have worked for child #3 (a boy). He is just hardwired a little differently. A few months ago he climbed the front of the stove and tipped it over, luckly with no damage done to him or the stove. Last month a toddler in the north island died doing that exact same thing. ** survivor guilt **

It's amazing that any boys survive to adult-hood sometimes.