Now that Cora has turned the speed and the curiosity up to 11, we have been scrambling to make this place safe for a little baby. It doesn't help that our house has become a construction zone (more pictures on that to come) but we are also challenged by the fact that Cora is not the only child in this house. When Audrey was a baby, there were many toys/craft supplies that just weren't around. While this can be an advantage for Cora at times (she LOVES the trampoline), it can also be difficult (when she falls off the trampoline for example). There's not much we can do about the big kid stuff except try to keep ahead of her as much as possible but we have found a few solutions for some issues we had in our kitchen.
The one thing our kitchen doesn't have is a pantry and while this open shelf we had worked for a while it proved much too tempting for Cora. So thanks to an extra heavy gate that Aunt Lala and Uncle Steve were no longer using, Cora has now been blocked from dumping all our pasta on the floor, much to her dismay.
We also stole another idea from Aunt Lala and Uncle Steve when it came time to figure out what to do with our kitchen drawers. The ones with glass/sharp things have baby locks but we didn't want to have to lock up all the drawers. Unfortunately, while they are light enough that Cora can open them, they are heavy enough to cause some serious pain when she would close them on her fingers. Enter the wine corks! A little packing tape and two corks later the drawers now have plenty of room for little fingers.