Making a Break for It!

Now that Benjamin is crawling — not his little frog hop either, he can really get around — we had to buy a baby gate to keep him in the living room. It’s a plastic one (for some reason that I’m sure a guy can’t understand, a wooden one wouldn’t do) and its been pretty effective. The only problem is, I don’t know how to put it up.
It’s one of those jobs that expands to cover the width of the doorway. You’re supposed to be able to press some button, expand it, then have it lock into place, tight against the door. There are two buttons on the device, but neither seem to do that.
This morning Benjamin and I decided to give mommy a little extra time in bed, so we got up to hang out in the living room. I set the gate against the doorway, as a sort of psychological deterrent against leaving, while I poked around the Internet on my laptop. This lasted for quite some time. Benjamin would crawl up to the gate, look at it, moan and gurgle in disappointment, then get distracted by his hand, or something else equally fascinating that he HAD to get in his mouth, and forget about getting into the kitchen.
After about an hour, though, the lure of the kitchen was too great. And can you blame him? There’s a dishwasher to bang on, cat food to try to get in his mouth, and chairs to pull himself up on! He became more determined, and decided that he should be able to somehow climb OVER the gate — and my illusion of security fell apart. He put his little hands in the holes in the gate and started pushing off the ground with his feet to try to get up. He wasn’t even high enough to have anywhere to fall, when the gate collapsed downward.
There he was, on his hands and knees, suddenly looking into the promised land! All of that open space before him, and the evil gate turned out to be no problem at all! The pacifier dropped from his mouth when his jaw dropped in what can only be described as baby amazement. And then he got this HUGE grin on his face, and set out to crawl over the fallen gate and on to the cat food bowl.
Of course, daddy then swept in from above and scooped him back up to the living room. I set the gate back up a little bit better than before, and strangely he hasn’t tried it again. Maybe he’s waiting until I’m distracted to make his move — but I’ve got a secret weapon up my sleeve: Baby Einstein! That’ll buy me at least 15 minutes of peace 😉
Nic’s gonna get some video up of him crawling around, because it is quite the site to behold…

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