Child Proofing

When Brandon started crawling Rob and I talked about child proofing. We thought, however that since he was low down there was no need. All he could reach was pots and pans, and the kitchen towel drawer. Oh and those damn DVD's. After about 2 months of the DVD's we finally wised up and put em all in a CD case. Problem Solved! The only two things we child proofed were the cabinet under the sink with all the chemicals and the bathroom cabinets..because Brandon loved to pick used items out of my bathroom trash.

Then he started walking. This posed a different problem. Right away he learned that walking meant climbing. He would push his stool around and open anything or get on the counters. Rob and I made the decision at this point to child proof the sharps drawer and Brandon's drawer, this happened after the 503985098 time he pulled out every cup and spoon he owned.

Other then that we never child proofed anything. Oh wait, we have those thingies in the plugs but the previous owners of this house had a 1.5 year old and had already done that for us. Truth be told they had already done the kitchen sink too (they also had poles in all the windows so you couldn't break in or something and they didn't know kids well because every one of those poles has now turned into a weapon in my home). I guess after the first two times of telling him no he got it. When it came to the stove, I started teaching him HOT from very early so he never really touched it. The knobs on the stove I've seen him touch once, and all he did was point to them and say HOT yeah! When we moved in our fire place had already been child proofed. And really all they did was put foam padding stuff around the tile edge. He can still reach the switch to turn it on he just knows better.

I'm not sure what else we could have child proofed, I know they sell lots of stuff, but to me it seemed better to just teach him no rather then have him think it was okay as soon as he could figure it out. The cool thing about the ones under the sink is they still open far enough that he can learn to throw stuff away.

Now I'm glad we don't have a bunch of stuff child proofed because we don't need it. The most recent thing we have done is put a latch on our front screen door way up high, because he already mastered the lock on that. All of our doors beep if opened because of our alarm system. The screen door didn't make noise though making it easy for him to escape.

So with our second kid coming I wonder if we will have as much success with not child proofing or if two of them will gang up on me. So what about you? What stuff did you child proof and why? Did the need for child proofing grow with two? Did you change anything the second time around?