It’s Just One More Step On The Road to Crazyville
January 31, 2006
Like good parents everywhere, we engage in the futile attempts of preventing our little children from getting into our cabinets. Futile because despite our good intentions they still manage to find a way to circumvent the child proof locking devices and get to the rubbermaid, pots, pans, and small appliances.
This is what I discovered in my kitchen yesterday:
See anything amiss? Like where are the cabinet knobs?
Upon further investigation I find them. And the lock that used to hold the doors shut.
You’ll notice that the lock is still locked tight. My son unscrewed the knobs from the cabinet doors.
Is there some manual somewhere that these babies are reading that none of us grownups are privy to? Or are babies just getting smarter. My personal theoryis that there is something in those prenatal vitamins, some sort of super neuron synapse booster*. Coupled with the fact that when our mothers were pregnant with us they were still drinking cocktails and smoking cigarettes, it’s no wonder that our brain power is not equal to that of our children.
When my five year old was this age we had the type of safety lock on our cabinet doors that was on the inside of the door. You would have to open the door up about an inch, push down on the latch to release it, and then you could open the door. My son used to stand in front of the cabinet door and take out his fury on the cabinet, shaking the door back and forth, back and forth, with all his might. While screaming on the top of his lungs at the injustice of it all.
One day I walked into the kitchen and the door was gone. The entire door … gone. He had pushed and pulled so hard on the door that the hinges gave way and the door came free. He then dragged the door away and I would later it find it several rooms away.
And this is why, if you ever come to my house, you will learn two things:
1) All cleaning things are kept in obscure, inconvenient high places, and may or may not be used on a regular basis, and
2) All rubbermaid containers, pots, pans, and muffin tins must be washed before coming into contact with food, unless stray hairs, dirt and debris are desired in the food. I know that most people have clean things put away in their cabinets, but at this house you can never be sure.
Consequently, you should visit at your own risk.
*I have no idea what this means, since I was not a recpient of those vitamins and have also had seven brain sucking pregnancies. But it sounds smart. Unless of course you actually are smart, then I suppose it doesn’t.
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OMG that is histerical!! I am a gate mommy, every room that has anything I dont want to clean up off the floor, or call poison control to find out how to get my son to puke it up is in a room behind a gate…I am going to have permamnant hip damage from lifting my leg that high a thousand times a day to get into the kitchen or the bathroom, but my son has yet to drink a bottle of formula 409, so I guess that it is a good trade.
Love your blog, keep the inspiration coming..:)
January 31st, 2006 at 10:37 amI just found your blog and it is making me die of laughter! My students keep turning around to figure out what I am laughing at. Your son is Houdini!
January 31st, 2006 at 10:43 amOh, lord. Sophia does the pulling on the doors with fury thing, too - I suppose it’s just a matter of time before they get pulled off altogether. I guess it’s good we’re renting - we can just blame it on faulty craftsmanship and make the maintenance guy repair it…
January 31st, 2006 at 10:57 amMy brother-in-law with no children was commenting recently about how “weird” our house was with all the tash cans sitting on counters or table tops and all the other poisons and breakables in odd locations.
We have the locks inside the drawers and cabinets, but since you can open them an inch, I still find all manner of things removed from the drawers and cabinets, because tiny little hands can reach pretty far in when you give them an inch.
January 31st, 2006 at 11:09 amyep.. that’s about right. Thanfully I have handles rather than knobs on my kitchen cabinet that houses the nasty stuff..
January 31st, 2006 at 11:15 amBut it did open just far enough to wiggle the fire extinguisher out. yep.. thankfully i caught it in time!
Denise
knitchat.com
Purlsofhope.com
I’ve come to the conclusion that all the child-proofing gadgets are for people whose kids aren’t all that determined to get into whatever it being locked away, anyway.
January 31st, 2006 at 11:50 amMy kids have been talking to your kids…
January 31st, 2006 at 12:14 pmYour kids should get paid to be testers of anything advertising itself as “babyproof/childproof”. Too funny!
January 31st, 2006 at 12:31 pmhahaha
Our entertainment center doors are SO crooked. The knobs kept getting pulled off too so the hubby put new longer screws in and was SURE that would hold them.
HA
They are wobbly again.
That is way funny.
January 31st, 2006 at 12:41 pmKids are much too smart these days.
CHRIS!!! You are scaring me! Ha! Ok, not really, but the pulling with fury thing did freak me out a little bit.
Miles is BRILLIANT, by the way.
January 31st, 2006 at 1:04 pmLOL!
We finally found something that works: Tot Locs. It involves boring holes in the inside of the cupboard door, inserting a bit of metal, and affixing a doohickey to the door and the frame. Then you use the magnet knob thing to unlatch it. (Don’t lose that knob, either, or you will go insane!)
Come to think of it, washing everything before you can use it may be a lot easier…
January 31st, 2006 at 1:55 pmAre our kids telepathically talking at night while we think they’re sleeping? You may have something on the vitamin thing. Both my boys are smarter than I am, and at 4 and 18 months, that just ain’t good. I saw the picture of the knobs/”safety latch” and knew it was something my older boy would do! Ahhh…gotta laugh to keep from screaming!
January 31st, 2006 at 2:40 pmMy DH was once called out to someone’s house to “fix” their VCR (yeah, way back then) and he couldn’t fix it because he couldn’t unlock it. And that was the problem - neither could the couple. They called their TWO YEAR OLD son in to find out what was going on and it turns out he had put a child lock on the remote so that his PARENTS wouldn’t change his VCR settings because he was taping all he favourite programmes!!
What the hell is going on????
January 31st, 2006 at 2:51 pmThe picture of his little chubby fingers grasping at the still locked protector is priceless.
I have never had dangerous chemicals anywhere close to ground level, thus my having to hunt them down has decreased the cleanliness of my home ;P
January 31st, 2006 at 3:09 pmoh yeah
January 31st, 2006 at 5:00 pmI still keep my cleaners in the highest cabinet.
under the sink is empty as it has been for almost 20 years!
Your blog is great! My son has managed both the knob trick and the door trick. I could run a whole blog on daily clean up. Glad I’m not the only one with a Houdini.
January 31st, 2006 at 5:46 pmI’m all about the magnet locks…stinky fingers in my house can never get in the cabinets…they’re awesome!!! Really - give them a try.
January 31st, 2006 at 6:53 pmAHHH!!! I love your son. LOL. That is a classic.
January 31st, 2006 at 9:01 pmLove the pic of his cute little chubby fingers right next to the “goods”! Lol… Babies today are evolving into little superhumans!
January 31st, 2006 at 9:15 pmThe baby fingers melted me. Aw!
January 31st, 2006 at 10:15 pmScary little geniuses, they are. I was so embarassed when my 18 month old taught my friend’s 4-year-old how to open their child locks.
February 1st, 2006 at 1:24 amI have a pile of knobs (usually not with the screws either) that go on various drawers and cabinets. Maybe when the kids are teenagers, I’ll put them back on.
February 1st, 2006 at 8:15 amROTFLOL. Your son is absolutely brilliant to think of unscrewing the door knobs to bypass the cupboard lock.
February 1st, 2006 at 9:23 amI don`t think it would have occurred to me to do that
Oh, so funny. My son is just on the cusp of this type of brilliance. He is just starting to crawl/scoot, and already makes a bee-line for the most dangerous items, like electrical cords.
Can’t wait. Ha ha.
Great blog, by the way.
February 1st, 2006 at 10:33 amThis entry cracked me up. I can just see the child doing this. Mostly because of my own son and various nephews and neices I know how darn smart they can be. Thanks for the laugh, I needed it today.
February 1st, 2006 at 3:12 pmMy husband says that you can rest assured that your child will go far in life thanks to his common sense.
February 2nd, 2006 at 9:44 amHey, I just found your blog and i love it! About those Prenatal vitamins, I still blame them for my growing another inch in my twenties after birthing two children, much to my already-shorter-than-me husband’s chagrin.
February 4th, 2006 at 9:30 amOK Chris. I know you probably won’t EVER check this, but I had to write this. When my 11 yr old was 18 mos. old we had little plastic links on our cabinet doors. All of the other ones he could get into. The plastic chains seemed to work. One morning he was very quiet and he finally came to me, with the chains in his hands, and said “mommy, these things were breaking my nerves.” 18 months old!
September 3rd, 2006 at 10:17 pmAlso, what’s up with the weirdo advertisements on your comments? Sick-o’s.