Baby proofing? . . . Good luck

What is this? I can tell you. It is a tack that holds a metal strip (the kind that separates two different types of flooring) to the ground.

What is it not? I can tell you this too. It is not something that you want to be fishing out of your 10 month old's mouth. My mischievous child pulled this one our of the floor with her teeth (or at least I am assuming) because as soon as I removed this one from her possession she went back for another one, undaunted and teeth first.

Hard to believe . . . she looks so innocent. On that note, I decided I was going to be proactive about baby proofing an area of our house that has several electric cords and a power stick. Winky has never particularly paid attention to the cords, but they are near an area that she likes to play, so Joe and I went to BabiesRUs and purchased every type of safety item for electric cords that you can imagine. Today I installed a cover over the power strip that looks kind of like this.

Smart, right? Well, almost, but as it turns out, Winky can fit her hand through that center opening, and then the safety cover turns into a little monkey trap. My little monkey stuck her hand through the opening, grabbed onto a cord and her pudgy little hand would no longer fit back out the opening. As I was ducking under our electric piano, trying to get her to open her hand so that I could pull it back out I started to wonder if Joe was going to come home and find us in exactly that spot, with Winky still holding onto a cord (very proud of herself by the way) and me trying to wrench her little hand free. Luckily, she is 10 months old (i.e. distractible) so I did eventually win. But now, with all my "safety/baby proofing" objects in place, Winky doesn't want to play with ANYTHING else. If I place her on the opposite side of the room, I have exactly the amount of time it takes for her to cross the room to get anything done, before I am sternly telling her no, picking her up, and trying to interest her in SOMETHING else. Obviously, she is taking a nap right now, or else I WOULD NOT have time to type this post.

What a little stinker. I really like her.