Day 43 - That'll Be $4367

So. We have reached the Time of Childproofing. This is so much fun, and all the gates add such a cozy, minimum-security prison look to my home! Sigh. If you are the parent of a small child, you've no doubt noticed the thousands and thousands of dollars worth of stuff you can buy to protect your child from everything from electrical shocks to poison. As we navigate this maze of measures, my question is: how much of this is really necessary and how much will just separate me from my hard-earned money and make me crazy?

A friend recently reminded me that even the best childproofing may just buy you time, and nothing replaces good supervision (moms - you know what I'm talking about - how your ears perk up when it's a little too quiet and you just KNOW that your child is eating chapstick?). She suggested a three-tiered approach to childproofing:
Level 1 - stuff that can kill them (poison, stairs, gas stove, etc.), the non-negotiables
Level 2 - stuff that could be very unpleasant (pulling things off tables, falls, etc.)
Level 3 - stuff that makes life more convenient for you (gating them into a particular room, etc.)

This approach makes a lot of sense to me. Short of wrapping them in bubble wrap and duct tape, we cannot prevent every accident, but we may be able to sidestep a lot of them. Over the next few weeks, I'll be trying to take a creative approach to keeping the young un from killing himself before I threaten to do it when he's 13. For starters, he loves to run around the coffee table, and managed to skin his nose on it last week - we both cried. Afterwards, I rimmed it with UGLY UGLY UGLY protective bump guards since it's only a matter of tiem before he gets up close and personal with it again. Then, I covered it with a really pretty jacquard cover I whipped up on my sewing machine. I also made a cover for the filing cabinet that he is determined to amputate his fingers in. I'll post pics this weekend, but you see where I'm going with this. Do you have any childproofing tricks that might save money and aren't hideous? Let's hear 'em!