I’ve written before about the uncertainty of choosing stuff in a new sector and the value of brand shopping, and I seem to have acquired a new brand benchmark – BabyDan is apparently, for me, the BMW of baby products. Whether that’s because its Danish and I have a bias thanks to Amanda’s heritage there, or it’s the good experience of the couple of bits we have from them already it’s hard to say. Amanda finds it pretty funny, but I’m a sucker for this sort of stuff – and prefer to build up trust in a few quality brands than risk wasting money elsewhere.

We’re having to look at a lot of stuff as Emily becomes more mobile (crawling? pah, easy at 8 months. Standing by myself? On it. Walking? Give me a couple of weeks…).

Babyproofing is a fiddly process. I don’t have a solution for my AV stuff or TV, we’ve got some BabyDan safety gates and are getting an oven guard and some cupboard locks. Amanda has some plug socket safety guards. I’m frantically searching eBay for some Ikea wall-fixings for the DVD racks. We’re trying to strike the balance between keeping Emily well away from things that are outright and immediately dangerous and deciding that some things – we’re just going to teach her to steer clear of. After all, we might have a baby-safe house, but when she’s at other people’s houses she should know that pulling the TV down on her head or posting toys through the DVD slot is a no-no.

There’s some clever tech available. Magnetic lock-and-keys for cupboards, heat-dissipating overlays for oven doors and the like, not to mention safety edgings for coffee tables. But it’s a learning process and I’m sure we’ll iterate as we go… anyone got any recommendations on particularly awesome baby-safety kit that we shouldn’t be without?