Baby Proofing

I never appreciated just how many cabinet doors and drawers there are in our kitchen until I had to baby-proof them.

It seemed I would never finish drilling tiny holes so that I could use tiny screws to affix tiny clips in order to keep tiny hands out of places they shouldn't be.

This undertaking was prompted by Little Miss Grabby Fingers' discovery that if she pulled plates out of the cabinets and dropped them on the floor the plates made the most marvelous shattering sound.

Thrown into sheer terror by the sight of a bare footed baby standing in the midst of a ceramic shards, I moved baby-proofing to the top of the to-do list.

It seems there ought to be an easier way to address the problem of babies getting into things they shouldn't. I'm thinking of developing baby-sized oven mitts that can only be removed by releasing a combination lock. While wearing the mitts, the baby would be limited to clapping hands in imitation of a Sea World sea lion clapping its flippers.