As any parent of a mobile baby knows, keeping your little one safe once he's on the go is quite the chore. All it takes is a moment with your back turned for baby to get in to trouble. Short of hovering over your little one constantly, what is a parent of a toddler to do? In this article, we'll talk about using things like baby play yards and playpens to keep the wee one safe while we get things done.
If you have a curious new crawler or walker, you probably spend much of your day hovering around them and trying to spot accidents before they happen. This is not only time consuming but downright exhausting! It's bad enough that you probably spent the better part of the last year with no sleep, but now you can't even get anything done at all. The dishes pile up, the laundry goes undone and you long for just a 5 minute sanity break.
Playard Baby
Sound familiar?
We've all been there. A mother's work is never done, especially when baby starts to go off on their own. Fortunately there is a solution that can both keep them safe and give you those precious minutes of sanity to tidy up, make dinner or do all of that other great stuff Mom's do to keep the house running.
Back when we were young, our mothers had your standard playpens for us. These were often enormous and had plush plastic railings that cracked when we bit it and netting all around. These days, you don't see many of those. They took up too much space and were not as durable as they could have been. Now, we have two basic options for fencing in baby - the pack and play and the baby play yard.
A pack and play is more like a small version of your traditional playpen. They fold up when not in use and transport easily which is a very nice feature. Many also have detachable bottoms for easy cleaning. the only trouble with a pack and play is that they are too small to keep an adventurous older baby or toddler happy for very long.
With that in mind, the next level up is called a baby play yard. These contraptions look more like small fences than they do a playpen. They are a lot larger with some models basically "room sized". What is really wonderful about these is that you can literally fence baby in to give them access to all of their favorite toys but without the worry of them running off, grabbing the TV, getting in to cabinets and all of that fun stuff they would otherwise do. For babies and toddlers who don't appreciate being confined, a baby play yard is the ideal choice.
A play yard has no base, it sits on the floor. They are also useful for outdoors, making it possible to erect a fence on the spot for when on vacation or just working in the garden with baby by your side. They do come apart easily and travel well. A baby play yard will last long past the baby stage and right through the toddler years for keeping your little one safe and out of trouble.