There is no doubt that Ingrid is actually crawling now. Proper crawling, on all fours, moving forward rather than backwards, and reaching whatever she wants to reach.

Not surprisingly the things she wants to reach are the things that she previously hasn’t been close to, and for very good reasons. These are things like bookshelves, plants, and the bundle of cables under our desks. At the moment she is still happy to explore the safer things, but it’s only a matter of time before she gets bored with them and wants to see the rest as well. After all, that’s what I would do if I found myself in her situation.

So what do we do now? There is no way we can remove everything breakable from the living room. We wouldn’t have anything left. And there is no real way to block off that half of the room, either. I don’t think it’s even possible to put a safety gate across a room that measures 6 metres wall to wall.

For now I try to have a relaxed interpretation of “child-safe”. The rules are still work-in-progress but the following seems to make sense:
– Things that would do permanent harm to her are not OK. (Blinds cords, or chewing on electricity cords.)
– Things that are expensive or hard to replace are not OK. (Pulling on computer cables, or books. Each book on its own is not expensive, but the contents of the lower bookshelf as a whole are expensive so the bookshelf is off limits.)

Everything else is really OK, even if it’s not ideal from an adult’s point of view. I think we just need to get used to a lot of cleaning up.
Bags: OK. A bit of baby drool won’t kill a rucksack. Same goes for carpets and most clothes.
Clothes rack: OK. It will hurt if she pulls it on her head, but won’t do any real damage.
Shoes: OK. A bit dirty, but then again she licks the floor as well.
The bag full of paper to be recycled: OK. Makes a real mess if spread out in the kitchen, but she’s old enough to not choke on the pieces, and it’s not that hard to pick it all up again.
Rubbish bin: OK. What’s the worst she can do? Spread mango peels and used napkins on the floor? That won’t kill us.

I’m not sure what to do about the plants though. We have so many that it’s hard to keep her away from them, and of course they look so very inviting, so great to play with. Some would survive if she pulled them down, and would survive a bit of chewing as well. Others would not. And some are harder to replace than others. I suspect that if she did pull one down, it would make such an interesting noise that she might want to repeat the experience, so plants are probably all off-limits for now.

I wonder how long it will take before it will actually be possible to tell her “no, don’t play with this” and have her listen. She completely ignores any such comments now.