After about 2 days of Noah crawling it became obvious that we needed to change things in the house. From one day to another many areas in the house become mindfields for him with lots of stuff that could potentially harm him. Suddenly a perfectly normal room has lots of dangerous items ... like shelves, wardrobes, coffee tables, radioators, drawers, etc. Not to forget many things that are not as such dangerous but can easily be destroyed by a baby. Needless to say that any dangerous or fragile item is EXTRA interesting for him. So we quickly realised that getting a play pen is probably easier than rearranging the entire house.

So we got one and it's great. It's basically just like a safe playing space where you know the baby is going to be OK which allows you to focus on other things for a short time. We don't leave Noah in there for too long but mostly he just sits with his toys and plays a little bit for 20 - 30 minutes at a time. It's a great practice ground for walking as he can hold on to the sides of the pen. We put a soft blanket in it as well for a bit of extra insulation (no, we don't have underfloor heating) and padding (for those walking accidents).

Our play pen is about 1.5m by 1.5m - so it takes up a fair amount of space but it's still small enough to find a space for it in most living rooms.

All in all a great invention. We had to sacrifice our coffee table for it though ... the play pen works just as well though as everyone usually gathers around it to watch and play with Noah.

-Stef

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