Maine Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
after the jumperoo, and after the exersaucer...
What do you do with them?? 
Taylor is right at the max weight limit for these things and I'm not sure if there is something else I can use as a safe place for her to be while I'm getting things done.
We have a baby gate in the threshold between our dining room and living room and can gate off the stairs. Which means she can be limited to just the living room. I hate the fact that I cannot see her when I'm in the kitchen though.
Should we get a walker or something along those lines? Why did I hear that those were dangerous now?
Re: after the jumperoo, and after the exersaucer...
MIL had walkers for the boys, you just have to watch out for stair wells...
but once the boys got to Ts age... i got a lot less done while they were awake!
Caroline stopped having an interest in the juperoo a couple of months ago. We have the SuperPlay yard so she has a large area that is safe, we have those foam letter mats down. Inside that we have the fisher price laugh and learn musical table which she loves b/c she can stand at that and play. Outside of that we have the Ride to Stride Dino that she loves. Other than that, it's a free for all and lots of watching as she crawls around the house etc. I've read that once the kiddos can start to attempt to walk you shouldn't have them in a walker so we've stopped that. At this point, Caroline really doesn't want to be confined in anything anyways. Fun new times ahead for us!
We had a Jeep walker thing, but in hindsight, we wish we hadn't gotten it. It is huge (and taking up space in our basement) and he didn't use it for that long before he was more into crawling and then walking.
Once he was mobile, we pretty much moved into having the foam mats on the hardwood floor living room, securing drawers, stripping the coffee table of anything we valued, and having gates all over the place. He has free reign and our living room is a constant disaster of toys. We try to let him do his thing, but we can't really put full focus on any task unless one spouse is mostly on baby duty or we're splitting 50/50. Making dinner when it's just me is always my favorite thing- not!!!
First off, it's time to babyproof if you haven't already done so! Lock up those cabinets and drawers and get anything breakable/dangerous/precious to you out of baby height.
When Owen was at that stage, I would barricade him in the area where I was and give him something that would hold his interest. For example, if I were cooking/cleaning in the kitchen, I'd sit him in the middle of the floor with a big wooden bowl and a wooden spoon, or a ton of tupperware, or both. It usually kept him occupied enough to do whatever I needed to do. You could also bring your highchair in, give her a small snack, and then give her some toys to explore -- the kind that suction to the tray are great. We have a small bead maze that suctions, and that used to keep Owen entranced for pretty long stretches.
Other than that, there's always the play yard or PNP options. Owen never would've gone for the PNP; I don't know about the play yard because I never had to try it. Ever since he was truly mobile I've just had to babyproof to death and put a little trust in God to do things like shower. (I shower with the door open and the curtain partially open and he wanders between the bathroom to visit me and his room to play.)