Survival of the fittest

May 3rd, 2004 · 5 Comments

There’s no shortage of articles or advice about how to baby-proof your house. But if you follow the advice, you have to put all your stuff away and install a bewildering array of little, white plastic locks, latches, hooks and fixtures all over your house. Before you know it, you can’t get the toilet lid open in the middle of the night or find an extension cord when you need one. To be honest, this is really a lot of work and pretty inconvenient. It also takes a lot of top-down management. Why not flip it around and get Trixie working for us?

We’ve decided to take an evolutionary approach to baby-proofing: baby-proofing by means of natural selection. The best part is that it there’s no laborious set-up involved — we just let Trixie go crazy in the apartment. When she’s done, sweep up the mess. By definition, whatever is left unbroken is now considered baby-proof.

Unfortunately, the limping gazelle of our household turned out to be the table lamp with glass shade. Poor Lampy. We’ll never forget. Good times. Good times.

How did this really happen? The lamp was secured from a floor attack, but Trixie climbed on top of the couch and pushed it off. It took me two hours to clean the pulverized glass off of and out of everything. She thought it was the funniest thing in the world.

Tags: Behavior

5 responses so far ↓

1 FrumDad // May 4, 2004 at 11:36 am

Spock to Kirk, in STII;TWOK:
He’s intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking…

Similarly, here. You’re not thinking like Trixie. Rachel’s attack of choice is to get up *behind* furniture (she’s like a rat with the crushable skeleton, sometimes!) and grab cords. After fighting it a bit, G and I have just decided to go Ahmish, and not use any electricity until Rachel’s old enough to drive herself to the hospital after minor elecrocutions.

–FrumDad
2 benmac // May 4, 2004 at 12:56 pm

Very good point. But it’s hard to keep up with her. It’s an evolutionary struggle that I’m destined to lose. Everyday she wakes up smarter, stronger — her neural net is building connections at an exponential rate. I’m lucky if I wake up and can remember what day of the week it is.

And I see you’ve taken to heart Spock’s other parenting advice from that same movie. Toward the end, I think it was something along the lines of “the needs of the baby outweigh the needs of the household…”
3 hannah // May 4, 2004 at 9:27 pm

What did you expect to happen after you made her a master of destruction — the atomic baby — on Halloween? She’s been waiting all these months to do more than dangle in the baby bjorn merely *looking * like she was wreaking havoc. And at last she has the skills to implement her schemes. Nice work, Trixie. And nice crime scene shot, dad. Did you get a mug shot of the remorseless Trixster after the crime? It would probably help your case in baby court if you captured her oh-so un-sorry mug after she commited her calculated act of destruction.
4 Nicholas // May 7, 2004 at 10:58 am

I was surprised at my reactions to baby broken glass. When one of my kids breaks something I automatically walk over an pick them up(the child). I then set them out of harms way, they almost never wear shoes.

I will to this bare foot. Sometimes at a run, depending on the age of the child (3 years, 8 months). Yes, I have cut my foot. But it is a natural reaction.
5 Diane // Oct 23, 2004 at 3:45 pm

Poor you and poor lamp. Baby proofing is a waste of time now. Just hope nothing else gets broken along the way.
Of course, since we have practically no furniture that can get broken, it’s not too much of a problem in my house.

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