Rookie Dad: Is grass a friend or enemy?

So it seems that The Youngling is determined to become more mobile than dad is prepared for. In recent days, she has moved from the classic belly scoot to a full-on army crawl to the occasional real crawl. We've had to remove the magazine rack, vases, a lamp or two and will soon have to imprison ourselves in a gated fortress. Yep, baby gates are coming whenever dad gets sick of pulling The Youngling out of corners and away from items better left alone - including the coffee table which she stands at now and thrashes remotes about.

The items better left alone category is a broad one. In the past couple weeks she has unplugged controllers from my Nintendo Gamecube, ejected a DVD from the DVD player, stuck her hand in the VCR slot and pulled dad's classic Nintendo 64 system down to the floor. The quick solution was to park her walker/car in front of the entertainment center but that's like a band-aid on a hand grenade wound.

The definite way, thus far, to keep The Youngling firmly anchored in one spot is to sit all nine months of her in the grass. I'm fairly certain that she's either deathly afraid of the lawn or she is afraid of messing up the perfect order of the blades of grass. I don't really care which one is true or if either is true because anything that keeps her in one place for a few minutes without rearranging everything in a room is good for me. But winter is just around the corner so the lawn jail will only last so long...