I thought, in my naivete, that childproofing a house protected the child from the house. One locked the medicine cabinet to keep the meds away from the kid. They sell foam strips to put around stone and tile … surely in a meeting of head and tile, it’s the head that we are worried about, not the tile. But a simple linguistic analysis of waterproof watch should have made it clear: the aim is to protect the watch from the water, not the other way around. A toddlerproof house is a house impermeable to toddlers.
A toddlerproof house does not exist. Take a waterproof watch deep enough and water will eventually work it’s way through the seal and destroy the watch. Give a toddler enough unsupervised time and he will eventually work his way through the drywall and destroy the house. What we’re talking about here is toddler resistance. You’ve got your 10 meter resistant watches, your 30 meter watches and your 50 meters watches. You’ve got your solo-girl-toddler resistant house, your boy-resistant house, and then you’ve got your triplet two-year-old boy resistant house. I’m not sure if those houses can have furniture or windows.
My friend Tom came over to help with our house. His assessment was simple: “If they can reach it, it will be destroyed. You’re not ready.” And Tom only has 2 girls.
I (sort of) finished my toddler-proofing prior to going to Vietnam. Since returning we have moved a dozen plants, locked 2 toilets, added a dozen cabinet locks, boxed all of our CD’s, moved the CD shelf to the basement, boxed 30 shelf-feet of books, stripped Toddler Territory of hanging artwork, added a second gate, put shields around the stove, added useless refrigerator locks to the fridge, emptied the fireplace shelf, shifted the sofa away from the scary banister, moved the small cabinet to the opposite side of the room, moved the kitchen light switch from one side of the wall to the other, installed a door, moved a shelf unit to the basement, added doorknob toddler-stoppers everywhere, stored all wooden toys and instituted a gate and door policy most closely approximated by a jail.
Moving a light switch might seem excessive, but if you’ve been reading the blog, you know our boys love switches and they love to hang out by the gate and watch mommy cook. Switch on. Switch off. Switch on. Switch off. It’s was like cooking in a disco and mommy didn’t like that.
How’s it all working? All three boys are still alive. Check. The house still stands. Check. But like medication, toddler-proofing has a few side effects.
For example, how do we get three boy toddlers from the carport to the bedroom? I’ll give you a hint. Opening all the gates and doors and saying, “OK, boys, let’s go take a nap” doesn’t do it. Secure kitchen gate. Secure all level 2 doors. Open kitchen door. Three boys run into kitchen. Secure kitchen door. Secure stairway gate. At this point one would be tempted to open the kitchen gate. That won’t work … they’ll just run back and forth. Lift each boy over kitchen gate into living room one at a time. Secure all level 1 doors. Open stairway gate. Open bedroom door. Heard boys down stairs, lured by a game of down-the-stairs-up-the-stairs. Secure stairway gate. Heard boys into bedroom.
At this point it gets tricky … you can’t close the bedroom door or they’ll scream, so we play lay-in-bed-get-up-from-bed for a while until everyone is napping. At night we play lay-in-bed-get-up-from-bed most of the night or until Daddy loses his patience and finds Stern-Daddy-Voice, after which we play sit-up-in-bed-lay-down-in-bed until Mommy comes to the rescue and gets them to sleep. I don’t know how Mommies do this.
Toddler Territory is bare. It looks like we moved into the house last week and our boxes have yet to arrive. Everywhere else is jammed. Mommy and Daddy Land looks like Ikea uses our house to store their unsold stuff in. There’s no floor, per se, but rather a path for navigating to key points in the room.
Now the worst part comes … the utter collapse of efficiency. Let’s say you are standing in the living room (Toddler Territory) and pick up a piece of lint. You’d like to throw this piece of lint away. By now, the triplets have noticed the lint and are interested in it. Thus … walk to kitchen, open gate, close gate immediately or suffer the consequence, grab magnetic lock, unlock cabinet, throw lint in trash, close cabinet, replace lock in hanger, open gate, close gate behind you … and return to the living room to be greeted by the smiling and helpful toddler who has his delicate little hand held up to you with a second piece of lint. Do I throw it away? Or roll model the efficiency of irresponsibility by stuffing it behind the couch? Off to the kitchen, open the gate … and so on.
I just installed toilet seat locks in the bathrooms, even though we keep the bathrooms locked. Just in case. About 10 minutes later Eva comes out and asks, “How do I get the toilet seat up?”, underscoring how Dr. Evil’s House of Horrors is evolving. After weeks of toddler-proofing, the house is safe from the kids and the kids are safe from the house. Now it’s our turn … Dr. Evil’s House of Mommy & Daddy Horrors. Locked up, stripped down, stuffed to the max and minimally efficient, we’ve created our 21st century testament to the intersection of toddlers and technology.
I’m going to write a book on Toddler-Proofing for Triplets. It’s one paragraph long and goes like this. Step 1: Lease out your home to a pair of tidy, middle-aged women. Step 2: Rent yourself an unfurnished apartment and put in a few mattrasses. Step 3: Raise your kids. Step 4: Return home when safe. I think this will save time and money.
