It is surprising sometimes just how many things that you have to change around the house in order to make it safe for kids. I know that kids have the habit of putting everything that they can get their hands on in their mouth and that once they are mobil there is nothing that is off bounds for them. After reading a bunch of how to child proof your home books and blogs and whatever else though I am almost in full freak out mode about how many things in my home can be huge hazards for the little things. At this point we have about three months before we actually have a little thing rolling around the carpets and then even after that it will be a number of months until little he or she can actually move around the house at all but I would rather start now and start to be even moderately prepared for what is to come.

I have started to make a list of all of the things that I had not really expected or anticipated. The thing I am working on right now is trying to figure out how to get all of the chords from the blinds and shades in the house up and hung on something so that the chords do not end up somehow dangling in the reach of little hands. Not only are the little plastic pieces on the ends of the blinds and shades a chocking hazard but probably more so, if by any chance the kid is able to pull the shades in just the right way it could mean the whole thing coming down on top of them. Even if it is just the pieces of the shades that are supposed to come down, it can come down quick and heavy. Thankfully since about half of the window treatments in the downstairs area are those fancy Hunter Douglas blinds that I got from Rockland Window covering that do not have the hanging down chords I only have to worry about a few of the window treatments around the house. I think that the ones downstairs are probably going to be the most important though since that is probably where the baby is going to be most of the time especially once he or she becomes mobile. I can deal with the upstairs window treatments later though. For now between getting the window coverings figure out downstairs plus the billions of other things that I have to do around the house to get ready for this baby I have plenty of things on my plate already and do not need to bother and worry too much about getting too ahead of myself about this whole thing. I knew that having a baby, especially our first one, was going to be an incredibly amount of work and stress but having to deal with all of these things plus a tornado of hormones is really adding up to be too much for me to handle right now.