by Becky Vieira posted in Parenting

Any new parent can tell you: babyproofing is a cinch. It takes maybe an hour to make your home safe for your child. A veteran parent, however, will laugh at that idea, knowing the process essentially never ends.
Every parenting book will tell you how to do it and when to begin safeguarding your outlets, bookcases and family pets. Not only to protect your children, but to keep your furniture ? and Fluffy the cat ? safe from your kid (seriously, have you seen a toddler yank on a cat?s tail").
The truth is that it?s not so cut-and-dried. It encompasses more than a simple weekend project and grows and evolves with each new stage of your child?s development. Five stages, in fact.

Stage 1: Rolling over/sitting up You?ve reached a major developmental milestone, congratulations. If parenthood were a video game you would have just leveled up. Right about now you are looking at your partner and saying, ?Ahhhh! Look at us, we're like real parents now. Hurry, let's buy all the babyproofing items on Amazon."
But in reality you don't use any of those little plastic devices yet. You just move everything to the edge of the room. And accidentally kick your ottoman for the next two weeks until you get used to it being in a new location.
?Stage 2: Crawling
Okay, pushing that potted plant over by the window isn't so helpful now that your baby can actually crawl to the plant. But it's still okay, no hands can reach inside the plant and grab any d...