Baby gates
 

I have a quad-level home which means I have 3 sets of stairs. Obviously, I need to make some provisions to protect my daughter from these stairs. She's 8 months old now so I figure I'm going to need gates for a couple of years. I know its going to be a pain in the ass for everyone else in the family but what do you do??? I probably won't put a gate in a couple of the locations but I'll still need at least 3 gates. 2 of them will be in very high traffic areas (family room to kitchen). Anyone have any ideas for some gates that won't create a traffic jam in my house or be so difficult to use that my older kids try to climb over them?? We already have a couple of the older pressure mounted gates that we can use in any room on a temp. basis but they're a pain to deal with. Maybe I should just design some automatic gates... :D :D Thanks in advance for your suggestions. :thumbsup:

oh man.. when I first saw the title I thought Bill Gates had a baby...

/we now return to the show already in progress

Use a "swing" gate. Trust me on this. ;)

http://www.evenflo.com/images/produc...pofstairlg.jpg

Oh, and...yeah. When I saw the thread title...I, also, thought that Bill was expecting an heir. Does that qualify me for "nerd" status? :D

Nope, you fail nerd status, because you should know that he already has sired:

I'll chime in, supporting the swing gate idea. We have the Safety First swing gate -- looks like that very model BoR shows, and it's been marvelous. Not difficult to remove from the hinges when moving larger objects through the doorway (like a desk, or a body). Another bonus of that model is that there's nothing mounted to the floor, which can be a pain.

For doorways you don't mind hopping over, the pressure mounted ones are fine to leave in. At the bottom / top of stairs, I'd stick with the swing variety.

Cool! There is hope for me, yet! ;)

And by posting this, you pass by a large margin. :lol: I'm happy to say that I didn't know he reproduced either. :cool:

As for the actual topic of this thread, I used swinging gates for a while and they were great. I fully recommend them.

ANother vote for swing gates... they are easy to use than pressure mount gates.

There are also a ton of different styles to choose from if the white plastic one in the photo above doesn't do it for you.

You should also remember that once your little monkey is in bed or out of the house you can leave gates open so you don't have to worry about the traffic jams.


(when I saw the topic I was thinking, big deal doesn't Bill Gates already have a couple of kids... at least I didn't know their names)

Woohoo! :D
I didn't know the names either, I looked it up. I thought he only had two.

And continuing on the real thread topic, we have two permanently-mounted gates, one plastic, one metal. I find the metal one much easier to open and close easily; it's a Kidco Safeway Gate. I'd include a picture, but it is hard to find one without a kid in it.

I'm probably going to get a lot of shit for this, but we didn't use gates to keep the kids off the (carpeted) stairs. They learned to use the stairs without anything spectacular happening. Occasionally, my almost-two-year-old wants to hold my hand as he descends, but he goes up and down by himself most of the time.

We do the same thing... The one pressure gate we have we used to keep our daughter in the kitchen when she was still crawling... Other than than we keep our eyes on her.

One of the places where a gate may be used is at the top of the stairs near the bedrooms. I don't think she'll spend much time alone up there so I probably won't put a gate up there. Besides, it's carpeted all the way down.

We choose to put a gate at the top of the stairs near the bedrooms... One night I heard the gate rattling. Turns out my daughter was sleep walking... I'm glad the gate was there...