Our grandson is 10 months old now and walking. He is, of course, adorable, but between walking and rapid crawling, very mobile.
We will be babysitting next Monday while the young parents attend a wedding, and so we have had to buy some additional equipment, namely a playpen, gates, and a car seat. If you haven't shopped for baby equipment lately, you would be amazed at how complicated it has become. There are so many choices! And there are so many reviews to "help" in decision-making.
The reviews did actually help in picking out the playpen, which unlike in the distant past, is no longer a small, easy to fold up item. You can still get those, but our kids wanted us to get what looks like a fence, plastic panels that snap together. That was fine. Then you find a few on Amazon or wherever and start to read the parent reviews - yikes! Pens arriving with broken pieces, toddlers using the design of the pen to climb out of it, missing parts, and so on. We did finally pick one and it now sits in our living room waiting for us to put it together.
Gates are also much fancier that when our kids were small. Some open, like a door. Some are designed especially for stairs with bannisters. Unfortunately our stairs has a wall on one side and bannister on the other and none of the gates are able to accommodate for that - not wide enough.
We haven't even begun looking at car seats - again so much easier when our kids were babies. The kids have a fancy one with a base that stays in the car and the seat lifts out. We need a simpler one that is just one piece and not too difficult to buckle in as we don't need it in the car all the time. And sometimes we need to backseat for friends.
However, getting to spend time with the little guy is so worth it!
In searching online and discussing with each other, we are thinking we don't need as much as our son seems to think we need. We can't seem to find gates that will work with our doorways, but then we aren't going to leave him alone in ANY room of our house (unless he's asleep in his portable crib), so we don't really need them. We do need a car seat though, still searching.
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