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Two unrelated baby safety questions
Forgive me in advance. Lucas is just now doing all of the things I'm sure your 8 month old did... but I'm in a tailspin!
1) The stairs. Ohh the stairs. Within one day he went from climbing a step to navigating an entire staircase. But how do you teach them the safe way to get down? I work on gently shifting his hips and showing him how to scoot back down but he insists on either A) butt-bumping down (which just looks horribly painful for your ass and spine) or 
crawling which would turn into a wicked faceplant if I wasn't there. Suggestions?
2) The tub. We use this inflatable ducky tub that sits in the big tub, but tonight I decided to do a 'real' bath. That went fine until he realized it was a big, water-filled playroom. He was slipping and sliding all over the place! He did slide back once (nothing hurt) but he looked a little scared. Is he just not ready for the 'real' tub yet? How do you police a Curious George? I just don't want him to split his chin or conk his head.
Thanks.
Signed,
I-swear-it's-not-my-first-day.
Re: Two unrelated baby safety questions
I can't really help on the stairs. I showed Natalie how to do it once and then she always did it that way again.
As far as the tub goes, you should get a plastic bath mat. They suction cup to the bottom and he won't slip!
This might sound dumb or obvious but have you scooted down the stairs on your belly yourself? My kids seem to learn really easily from imitation. I also let K do it her way a few times and was just there to catch her right before she face planted so she knew what the consequence was for doing it that way. She's a little more head strong than Ana.
I like the bath mat idea. They also have bath bumpers that fit on the edges of the tub. They seem kind of a pain though if you can't leave them there all the time.
the stairs thing is hard. ingrid just learned to climb them (quickly!) today, and we have a lot more than 5, so it could be an issue. i think we'll definitely have to babygate b/c it is hard to keep my eye on 2 all the time. we were in a flat apartment when G was going through this stage, so i'm new with it too. i don't feel like she'll be trustworthy on the stairs for a while.
ingrid has been bathing w/ gretta in a regular tub for quite some time now, but i do recall the early slippery/slidey days. he'll get better at it b/c he'll be less interested in everything. our tub has a rough bottom, but whenever we go home to my parents we have to use a bathmat to prevent sliding everywhere. it is even hard for G to sit w/o sliding at my parent's home. i suggest checking out TJMaxx for the mat, they are quite a bit cheaper there than at target.
ETA: I just read my response and it kinda sounded like i was bragging or something about Ingrid being in the big bath, and i totally didn't mean it like that. Gretta took a bath in the smaller plastic tub FOREVER b/c it was so much easier. Ingrid just moved out of it quickly b/c we wanted to consolidate tub time. i basically just meant that, like everything else, you'll soon forget that the slipping in the tub is an issue. a bath mat will help a ton. and i agree w/ BP - you have to be diligent about removing it every night and hanging it on the wall of the tub to dry, or it gets gross quickly.
Gosh I am feeling bad for not getting C to go down the stairs safely. I just try to get her down safely. She is a magnet to the stairs and seems to climb more if no one is looking than if we are there with her.
On the tub I just let her do her thing. Our tub is textured on the bottom. She slips on occasion but I can usually catch her.
I never thought I was the over cautious Mom until I read all of the responses.
Nicholas didn't do stairs at all until closer to 2. He never crawled down them, wanted to walk upright, so he's always known that "Mom goes first" and he had to hold my hand until he could reach the rail. Now he does fine on his own, but I still always go ahead of him because it is tile over concrete at the bottom of the stairs.
As for the tub, we kept him in the blue plastic tub until 14mos. The only reason I ever bathed him without it is he woke up late one night puking and I just ran him straight to the bath and decided I didn't want to have to clean puke off of the foam. I figured out that he did just fine without it and took it to the basement. He probably would have been stuck in that thing until 18mos if he hadn't had that one sick night.
We just let C bump down the stairs on his butt. I didn't seem to hurt him even though it looked a little rough to us. Of course, he did have a diaper on providing a little bit of cushion so maybe that helped him. We had a lot more than 5 stairs so we baby gated and just watched him go down until we were confident he could go up and down by himself without falling all of the way down. He never did try crawling down face first so I'm no help on that one.
We use a no slip bath mat with C. It works really well then we take it up right after the bath and hang it up. The other problem we had later on was C wanting to stand up all of the time and he would try to stand up underneath the faucette and he could hit his head (although I think you can get faucette covers too but we don't have one). We had to constantly tell him to sit down, then after a few weeks he got the message and doesn't try to stand as much now. I definitely think it helps keeping just a few inches of water in the tub during bath time.
I am more of the nervous nelly types, but I would gate the stairs. There is just too much that can happen to a new stair-climber that scares me. For K, I insist that he goes backwards, crawling down, and if he starts to turn around, I move him back to the top, and repeat the 'scoot down backwards' and he will usually do that (till the next time, and we do it all over again).
For the bath- I would also use a mat. Or, you can get in with him. I still do this with K on occasion (and wear a bathing suit, as he is getting very interested in pointing to mommy's boobs when I don't have a bra on).
Good luck- baby proofing is one tough thing. I think as long as you can take certain precautions, and if the consequence isn't too bad, sometimes natural consequence is the way they learn (or, that is what people keep telling me:)).
We don't have stairs at home, but I would say the butt bump would be OK, Heck, we all did it as we got older WAY fun
HELLO SLEEPING BAGS down the stairs!! El tries to go on her belly, and puts one arm down to gauge, it, well right now she tries to do that from our bed, and it ends w/ me catching her before she face plants into the carpet.
I have a bath chair you could barrow if you want? to slowly graduate to the big bathtub, El doesn't like it when I lay her back to wash her hair. It's actually easier for us to stick her head under the faucet than to lay her back, last night it took H to 'hold' her down while I rinsed her hair out. LMK about the chair!
This and This. Even with the bath mat (TJ Maxx) M still likes to try and stand and walk, I also suggest a faucet cover, you can get them at Target, etc. Since M likes to move around in there, I didn't want her to bump her head on the faucet.
DS hasnt mastered down the stairs yet, he loves to go up so as soon as he goes down on step all he wants to do is go back up. So no adivce
tub: we use a bath mat with the section cup on the bottom, but it didnt stick to our tub so i turned it 90 deg and the edges stick to the sides of the tub. And DS hasnt figured out he can really move in the tub yet (no one tell him!) so he rotates sometimes but usually just sits on mat and whines for me to move his toys closer if he cant reach. Then I use plastic glasses to rinse his hair.