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Thursday, February 3, 2011

Hosting our first playdate

Sammy has attended plenty of playdates but I've never hosted one at my house because a. I mostly had toys and stuff for the primarily immobile set and b. my house is not childproofed by any stretch of the imagination (I'm a terrible procrastinator).  So I decided to take a sort of trial by fire approach to things and invited my friend Erin and her son, Ayden, over to play last week.  I figured at the very least the two boys would have fun, plus it would do me good to see how an actual kid fares in my house so I would know what areas I would definitely have to work on when it came time to childproof the place.

Before Erin and Ayden arrived, I placed safety gates at the top of the stairs (one of the few things I've done to prepare for having kids in the house) and pulled out a bunch of the "big kid" toys that I have stashed away for Sammy when he gets older, like a Radio Flyer scooter, wooden puzzles, a wooden fire house and cars, and of course the awesome vintage Fisher Price Little people school bus and parking garage set.  Ayden had a blast playing with everything (and strewing it around the living room) and Sammy definitely enjoyed watching the two-year-old tornado in action.  I think there will definitely be more playdates in store for these two--just look at all of the fun they had:




Ayden helped point out some problem areas that I'll have to address, like the corners of the coffee table (I knew that was going to be an issue), remote control storage, and figuring out some way to keep tiny little fingers off of the DVD player and stereo.  Other than that, the house held up pretty well and I feel a bit better about having a mobile child at some point.  Anyone have any childproofing tips to share?  I'm all ears!

8 comments:

Maeve's Momma said...

First of all, love that top pic of Sammy, that face is too much!

We mounted our tv on the wall, and put the dvd and vcr on a shelf just below the tv, like 4 feet off the ground. It seems like a lot of work, but those kind of electronics aren't cheap to fix, and Maeve had already figured out how to open the dvd player, so it was only a matter of time till she put something delightful in there!

They have corner protector type-things at Target, but mostly I just watch her for those. It does seem like kids go straight for sharp and dangerous things!

Julianne said...

I'm a huge procrastinator to and figure I'll move stuff as L finds it:) I want to do something about the coffee table but Tim doesn't. Dude, it's a 5' table of death and I don't want to deal with blood.

Fighting Mama said...

You can totally mount the tv on the wall and move the components up to a shelf - we have that in our playroom. In our living room, we had a Super Yard gate bungeed in place. It was a temp fix and since the SuperYard can be broken in to sep pieces, you can use as much as you need. The first Christmas we had it around the tree too. ;)

Unknown said...

Barbed wire. If it's good enough for convicts, it's good enough for toddlers! Especially since convicted felons and toddlers have many of the same skills... You know, turning common household items into something deadly, yelling at the warden (or parent, whatever you prefer being called), and they're beginning to use time-out which is just like spending time in solitary!

Melissa said...

hooray for your successful playdate - nothing points out safety issues faster than a group of toddlers. Might I recommend a "ding-dong" door alarm if you have any doors that open to the outside world easily? We had a playdate escapee one time - seriously!

Karin said...

Cute photos! Sammy will have cool toys to play with when he is a little older! We are also just trying to make everything safer as Amy has started to "crawl"...well, sort of!

MAK said...

L-L-L, I luh-luh-luv ya, buddy!

Unknown said...

We got a nice entertainment center from CSN that happens to have a clasp in the front that is large enough to lock with a luggage padlock. We just put the movie in, then lock everything up. It works pretty well. For the rest we just watch our toddler like a hawk.

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