Ode to Baby Gates

When you scroll through all those carefully curated images on perfect-mommy Instagram feeds, what is one thing you rarely see? BABY GATES. Right? I mean, I would love to have my toddler free-ranging it in the house. And I tried. Oh, I tried.

But this baby gate has been a total game-changer.

If you're in the market, it's the Evenflo Soft + Wide Gate ($40 and PRIME).

Wide is the part that matters most.

In brief: Eloise had taken to climbing up the dining room table, like c.o.n.s.t.a.n.t.l.y. When I was trying to cook. When I was trying to clean. Just, always. I had trouble finding a gate for the nearly 60 inches of gap between the kitchen and dining room. I kept beating myself up thinking that somehow I needed to simply figure out how to get her to stop . . . or that magically she would learn the proper way to keep herself safe with enough trial and error.

Nope.

She fell hard the other day, and I said to hell with it. To hell with aesthetics. To hell with being one of those mystical earth mamas who doesn't cage in her kids. The gate showed up the next day in the mail (super fast!) . . . and I installed it immediately. I actually don't mind at all how it looks. We intend to keep it up most of the time, but it folds away very easily for storage and even travel.

Here's the way our downstairs is now gated off.


Not exactly pretty. Not exactly glamorous. But I can now turn my back for three whole seconds without having to worry (too much). The two gates work together to keep Eloise off the dining table AND the stairs. It's amazing. I think the only thing I love more is our toilet lock. Because, well, I was finding EVERYTHING tossed in the toilet. That's not something we dealt with when Ada was a toddler because we only had one upstairs bathroom.

I have a toy organization post planned for next week. Get ready for it! In the meantime, happy weekend! I think the stomach bug has arrived in our household. Should be an interesting few days.