Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Our Latest "Childproofing" Measures

For a time, we thought our house was pretty childproof... We are learning, of course, that there really is no such thing! Everett is, for the most part, a very obedient, helpful boy, but he has discovered some creative ways to make a lot of work for Cary. Once during a family picnic (summer of 2007), he came out of the bathroom and said to me: "I don't like Spiderman anymore." I assumed he was referring to his underwear, and that he had just changed into another pair.

Well, a few hours later I learned that my assumption was incorrect. Apparently he had decided that he no longer liked a spiderman toy, and had attempted to flush it down the toilet. This being the day of a family picnic, the bathroom had heavy usage, and by the time we discovered the problem... well, I guess that would be TMI. Cary spent a couple of hours that night taking everything apart and mopping things up, and the next day Everett helped retrieve spiderman from the pipe and replace the toilet.

A couple of months later, we discovered that the vent in Everett's room was not apparently not attached securely enough. I had let all four children play with stuffed animals in there for a few minutes while I vacuumed another bedroom. They removed the vent and proceeded to drop interesting objects into the ducts. That night Cary spent some time opening the ductwork and retrieving an interesting assortment of little treasures.

Our latest childproofing efforts have involved the kitchen chairs. For a while it was quite effective to lay the chairs down on the floor under the table, but the girls have recently discovered that they can still move the booster seats around and use them to reach all the neat stuff on the countertops. This is our most recent (temporary) solution:


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