just store everything away... its only for about 5 years of your life and then you can make your home about you again.

Locking cabinets are our friend use them and never expect height to keep a climber out of things. My youngest was still learning to walk when I caught him on top of the FRIDGE!!!

High quality baby gates are worth it. Most of them are easier to use, fit into home decor and are more durable.

That side board/hutch near the stair railing in the first picture is asking for trouble! Kids live to climb!

I taught my kids the butt scoot down the stairs. Sit on your bottom and let it scoot and fall to next stair. I did it with both my boys every morning.

Lock every cabinet. I can't emphasize this one enough.

Kids will learn locks on doors quicker than you realize. Adding a second higher lock that is out of reach will keep them from wondering out the door.

Leave hanging cords out of reach when possible

Anchor baby's bedroom furniture to wall. Pulling out those drawers to climb to the top is way too tempting.

Anchor the TV!

Keep small.magnets and button cell batteries out if reach.

Cook on the back burners with pot handles inward if possible. If you have a chance get a stove/oven with controls up top.

Rubber pad the corners of hard surfaces. Thus is especially true if you have more than 1 toddler. There will be horse play and shoving! Make sure their head is protected from hitting that mantel stone!

Door based baby gates are so worth the cost and installation hassle. Trust me on this.

And have the doctors number ready and the poison control center. My two stuck everything in their mouths. One ate a large cardboard box! Another decided germ x alcohol hand cleaner was tasty. (Face palms). Don't feel bad if it happens. A lot of parents go through mini heart attacks with their kids. Just be ready for it!

Basic first aid skills like: learning how to immobilize a broken arm/leg or how to treat burns, etc are good skills to also have.

My exterior doors have levers instead of round handles due to hand problems. Unfortunately they are at just the right height for a preschool child to pull down and open the doors. One of my grandkids was constantly opening the front door which leads to a main street. We ended up putting one of those loop over a knob locks like in hotel rooms at the top of the door. Our "Dezzie lock" has been very helpful with her, her younger sisters and their cousins.

Don't have children..... just kidding... single story homes

Move any danger material (cleaning chemicals, trash bags, choking hazards, etc.) to a place the littlest cannot access. Secure items such as tvs to prevent them from falling. A baby gate to prevent littles who are just learning from getting into a dangerous predicament. However, don't remove everything. Teach your children what is acceptable to touch and what should be left alone. Not every home or business you visit will be baby proof. It is so much easier to teach them this than be paranoid about visiting friends, relatives, and places of business. This is what I did. And it has made my life so much easier because I'm not hanging over my child telling either of them to stop touching things or to get out of places they don't belong (think bathroom cupboards and under the kitchen sink).

Duct tape.

It's easier to gate a kid into rooms than out of danger zones.

We had a lot of modern stairways that basically couldn't be gated, but we could fence off the living area (to keep the kid in there with us), or put a gate in her bedroom doorway (for naps and timeouts), etc.

Also, don't do the really crazy stuff until you know whether you have a climber. If you don't, then most of it is wasted, and if you do, a specialist can secure all the tall things in your house in an afternoon. The problems are so totally different that it's barely worth trying to address them in the abstract.

We used stair gates with mixed success. First I think they're over priced. Ours were steel and attached to the wall with a hinge system. The kids would constantly beat on these things, including hanging on them and yanking on them like they were locked up in Attica. In all fairness, kids that age do act like criminals.

If I had to do it over again I'd do what my dad did when we went to visit him: screw a wooden channel on both sides of the stairway and then just have a piece of plywood that you lift out to get out. I guess you could make it look as nice as you want. It isn't elegant (elegance goes out the window with young kids) but this method is cheaper, durable, easily changed (add a taller piece of plywood), and you can't see through it (my kids loved to throw things through it and whine until I got it, sit down - all over again. Ha ha ha...)

If your house has stairs these things become a bigger part of your life than you ever thought possible...for years.

One more quick one in the spirit of the season: you only get to decorate the top half of a Christmas tree!

Make sure to secure tv's.