The Big Boy Bed has prompted us to consider the possibility of Babyman exiting the apartment in the night. I know from experience that his first (and probably only) stop is actually our bedroom, but I live in fear of waking up in the morning to find that, outside of the comfortable cage-like confines of his crib, he has decided to go somewhere…else. Despite the fact that there are 15 stories of apartment building for Babyman to navigate (by way of an elevator in which he can only reach the buttons for floors B through 4), followed by a vast lobby, I am convinced that he *could* find himself standing alone in the middle of the Embarcadero at 4am, dodging oncoming traffic while Mommy and Daddy slumber peacefully.
Living on the 15th floor has long presented worries & challenges. There are floor-to-ceiling window wells in both bedrooms with shutter-style windows that Babyman could reach by the time he was 15 months old. My mom solved that one by commissioning 4-ft plexiglass barricades which we then bolted to the sides of the window wells. A sliding glass door onto a deck provides the only fresh air in the livingroom, so we had our building maintenance install not one but two screw locks, one on the floor and one way up high, in order to bolt the door in place at all times.
But with Babyman’s new nighttime freedom (and his height — the other day he demonstrated that he can easily work the deadbolt on the front door when he feels like it!) we are taking security to a whole new level. Each and every night, the safety chain is applied to the front door. A baby gate extends across the hallway outside our rooms. Our goal: a gauntlet of obstacles he must overcome in order to leave…and hopefully, at least one of his parents will wake up at some point in the effort. (The one saving grace is that while Babyman may have mastered the deadbolt, he has not yet mastered stealth…or really, volume control of any kind.)
While these measures do provide us comfort, they also present problems. Like last week, when I safety-chained my husband out of the apartment when he was at a ballgame with friends (he had to phone the house from the hallway at 12:30am in order to wake me so I could let him in). Or the simple fact that my abdomen currently doubles as a hotel room for another human being, so jumping back and forth over a baby gate every time I fancy a sip of water in the night is becoming something of a physical challenge (not to mention reaching over a 4-ft plexiglass barricade into a window well every time I need some fresh air).
Oh, well. At the end of the day (literally!), I guess you have do whatever lets you sleep at night. Such is the price of freedom, eh?
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