Our Baby Gate

After your first child you have to decide what to do about baby gates. With one child it is no big deal, you have a gate and you climb over the gate. With two children especially close in age, you think yes a gate will make baby safe, but your toddler will inevitably climb over the gate and fall down the stairs. So you do one of two things; risk the baby falling down the stairs or the toddler climbing over the gate. We haven't had a baby gate in a long time. But Joseph and Anna are very good at being Sammy's gate. If Sammy come within five feet of any stairs in our house Joseph yells "MOM Sammy falling down!" Anna and him RUN to the stairs and try to block him, it is very cute, but as you can see probably not very effective. We are lucky that Sammy follows me around and doesn't really care too much about the stairs yet, but we do "practice" a couple times a week. The other day we were outside, Sammy was crawling around in the grass. We have probably seven low concrete steps going up to our front door. I was helping Elizabeth with her riding and I turn around and Sammy is on the third step! I ran over there and grabbed him. In our house he has not climbed up ANY steps so I never even thought about him doing that. But the steps are lower there so easier to climb. I about had a heart attack!