A floor with somewhere to go

Crawling is one of the things that often turns up somewhere between seven and ten months — a window wide enough to hold a great many ordinary afternoons, and wide enough that nothing about it is urgent. What you can offer is small: a stretch of floor with nothing in the way, and something at the far end worth the trip. Getting there under their own steam, in whatever style that takes, is its own reward.

🛡️ A baby who can travel meets everything at floor level. Before the first trip, get down to their height and look along the route: trailing cords and blind pulls, anything small enough to pass through a toilet-roll tube, cleaning bottles under the sink, hot drinks on low tables, and the sharp corner of the table you just pushed aside. Stairs get a gate at the top and the bottom before the game starts, not after it. Stay in the room for the whole of it — a floor that was clear ten minutes ago is not clear once someone else has walked through it.