No More Baby Gates {The Ordinary Moments}
I remember vividly the weekend we spent putting baby gates up around the house. It was when LP started cruising around the furniture, moving so fast that we needed eyes in the back of our heads. We put a baby gate on the nursery so that we could leave her in there playing, outside of her cot, and not worry about her falling down the stairs.
Then Little Man came along, and we moved LP to her big girl room, moving her from her cot into a single bed and adding a new baby gate on her door to stop her wandering around the house at night. That baby gate got taken down when we decorated that hallway and LP had learnt to stay in her room all night.
But the baby gate on the nursery remained and over the last few months Little Man has been waking up and standing at his baby gate patiently until we came to undo the gate for him. But when we were on holiday in the Isle of Wight the children loved running from their rooms and into ours, climbing in bed for cuddles in the morning without waiting for us to get them.
So when we came home we decided to take the gate off Little Man’s room. Since then he has run into our room every morning with a look of glee on his face, dragging an assortment of cuddly toys behind him. But yesterday I realised, that’s it. A house without baby gates and children with the freedom to move around the house as they like.
We have spent nearly four years surrounded by baby gates and it feels like yesterday we were screwing them in place. But it’s just another of those signs that children do grow so fast and although it feels like yesterday that LP was just finding her feet, just starting to cruise around the furniture, in reality it was so long ago and those babies really aren’t babies anymore.
Aww, the end of an era! We’ve only got one gate across the hall way upstairs which was supposed to stop Toby getting to the stairs but we very rarely close it these days. Gabe is well and truly on the move now though so I’m sure we’ve still got a year or two of gates ahead of us!
Ah bless, you’re right they grow up so quickly. We don’t have baby gates, so for us getting rid of the cot will have the same effect.
Nat.x
Oh not to hear that familiar clang of a gate closing at the end of a day! It’s so bittersweet and you’re right reminds us all that the baby days are so short xx
Wow! I’ve been wondering recently whether we still need as many gates – I hate restricting her movement and shutting her in her room – but we’re not ready to get rid of them yet; I’m looking forward to not having to ease them silently shut at bedtime every night, though!
It goes too quickly doesn’t it?! As lovely and easy as older children are, I still have these little pangs of wistful feelings for the baby days.
Stevie x
Awww it’s sometimes the little things isn’t it? I felt a bit like that once we stopped using the baby monitor. We used ours until C was 2.5 because we lived in a 3 storey house and needed them in case he shouted out. Once we moved (to a bungalow) we didn’t need them anymore. It’s like the end of an era – I realised when we stopped using it, we’ll never need to have a baby monitor in our house again.
OOOOO what a big change. I remember when we took ours off and the door ways seemed so wide haha how exciting to be progressing passed them x