Why There Are DVDs On My Floor

I baby-proofed the living room. Mostly.

• I taped up the old chair that had stuffing coming out of it so that the baby didn't pull the stuffing out and shove it down her throat to choke on.
• I used a tall box that perfectly fit in the opening that holds the wires from the electronics AND the books on the bookshelves that she liked to drop on her own head while she rolled around in the wires.
• I used a large old pillow to cleverly conceal the 9-outlet electrical strip that she really wanted to explore with her tongue.
• The floor in the baby-approved area has been cleaned of all coins that could go in her mouth; that's money we just can't afford to lose! If we're not careful, our little thief will use her ingenious way of hiding it until later by eating it now and smuggling it out.
• The exit from the living room to the area where the floor has not been meticulously checked for pennies, dimes, quarters, and other foreign objects that could go in her mouth has been blocked with large boxes and other baby-stoppers.

Rather than being well-planned and thought-out, this baby-proofing has been done in direct reaction to what the baby has done every day. By tomorrow I will probably have had to come up with some other new way of protecting the baby from killing herself*.

But there are some things that I haven't done much about. For example, the movie/video game storage under the TV. Oh, I've put her toy box in front of the TV area to brunt most of the damage she could do but she just uses that to climb up and start playing with the DVR/Roku box/DVDs because she sees the barrier and immediately wants to know what's on the other side that she can play with, regardless of the fact that the things creating the barrier are HER TOYS.

So she gets a DVD, chews on it a bit, then throws it on the floor. Maybe she reprograms our DVR so that instead of recording the newest Next Food Network Star or Doctor Who it's recording reruns of Sex In The City. Maybe she presses enough buttons on our Roku box that she buys every season of Chuck from Amazon Prime**.

But so what? She's a kid, exploring the world. None of these things will hurt her and she'll get to know the world around her a bit more.

Yes, the house will be a bit messier than we'd like because I let her throw the DVDs around but later, when she's a little older she can learn to also help pick them up***. Her smile when she gets a DVD down that she's been stretching for for five minutes is worth a few soggy cardboard corners on the DVD covers and half a minute's worth of cleaning up when she's taking a nap.

If it probably won't hurt her and it makes her happy, I try to let her do it, and I see nothing wrong with that.

*She seems to TRY, I swear!

**I would thank her for that last one, probably, after boggling at the bill.

***Experienced parents, stop laughing.