Security Part 1 of 3: Locks of Love

- from Jeremy

The home security salesman on the phone was stunned to silence. I told him that I wasn't worried with keeping people out of my house, that I was needing someway to make sure that no one can escape. "What do you offer in the way of concertina wire?" What I really need is one of those concrete moats they put around the polar bears.

So how do you keep a 5- and 3-year old safe when they wouldn't know safe if it flew up on a broomstick and handed them an fresh apricot? How do you convey the concept of looking both ways before crossing to a child who won't look at you when you're talking and wouldn't know what you're saying anyway? How do you keep them out of the neighbor's pool? Or out of the cabinet where the gummy vitamins are? And why do they like the gummy vitamins better than actual gummy snacks anyway? Do they just know that they're more expensive? Can they taste my frustration?

So here is a post for all you parents of road runners and dirt tasters, for all you care-givers to bookshelf climbers and escape artists. Here are some ways we keep the asylum perimeter secure and the inmates accurately counted.

This is how we keep the medicines and vitamins and straws from all getting chewed before their time. Plenty of parents use these cupboard locks, but we have to double up on some of them. It makes it a pleasure to try and grab the salt shaker with one hand and hold your plate of goulash in the other.

Gangstas have spinners on their whips, but gangsta parents have spinners on their linen closet doe knobz. Our "new" house has 12 doorways in the hall, but behind only 2 of those doors are towels that we like to fold only once per wash and fitted sheets that are hazardous when dragged onto the tile. Jo can actually open these, but it takes him a few noisy tries.

This is the way to keep the junior staff out of the management only areas, and it used to only take the bottom one. In actual fact, these gates are water control devices. In the daylight hours it keeps the tub from running nonstop, and during the third shift it keeps the floor in front of the kitchen sink from becoming a slippery trap.

Stay tuned for the moat installation.