After we moved in we quickly realized we would need an area rug for the C Monster's play room if we wanted to avoid him screeching up the hardwood floor. I really wish I could now be posting that we only looked at eco-friendly area rugs but well in reality I did not want to spend 1500$ upward on a rug that was going in a playroom. We also did not want to buy a kid specific area rug, so that if in 2 years our dinning room stops being a playroom and starts being a dinning room, we would not be stuck with a 8x10 kids area rug.
We started by browsing online and found patterns that we liked and work with our space. Narrowed them down to our favourite 4; then we checked them out in-store along with many others. Here are 4 rugs that had made our short list before we started to look at them in person:
Stockholm @$299 from Ikea: I was really disappointed with this one. It was not our favourite pattern but the idea of a wool rug at $300 in the right size was exciting. It is a woven flat rug that mean it has no pile which translates into a very rough surface - not good for playing on.
Gate @850 from Dwell Studio: We never visited a store with this one as this was our back up rug if we did not like the Structube ones, as the price point on this one was a bit more then we wanted to spend.
Freeport @ $499 from Structube: In person the white is actually light grey; this caused the rug to look soiled even when it is clean. However this is a wool rug and I do like my natural fibres. I would like to note that before we saw any of the rugs this was Geoff's favorite.
Juno @499 from Structube: We were a bit concerned with the white and that it would easily stain. I would like to point out that this was my favourite rug before we saw any of them in person. This one is also wool.
Some of the key points we were looking for were:
Durability
Thigh pill count, meaning that the yarn used to make the rug was weaved very tightly and dense
Natural fibre
Priced under $1000
Size: 8' x 10' minimum and 8'-6" x 11' maximum
Flexible design, wanted an area rug that would work in a playroom or a living room or a dinning room
C Monster's opinion. This was by no means the deciding factor but we wanted him to feel involved in selecting the rug; it was going in his space after all.
And here is our final choice; so far everyone is happy with it; C Monster particularly enjoys driving his toy cars along the white stripes:
It's official our son is mobile, he can crawl, cruise, crawl to an object and pull himself to standing and don't forget the scariest situation of them all crawl to him push toy pull himself up and take off. This is quit an accomplishment for him as he had been cruising since mid october (7 1/2 months) but did not show any interest in crawling. Were we ever happy when he decided to to pull himself forward on all 4; however now that he has mastered this new skill along with his other mobility skills life is a bit hectic and scary.
First we had to baby proof; I moved all our household items that were dangerous to upper shelves, we bolted all our tall bookcases to the wall (thank you dad for helping out with this); we bought gates and various baby proofing hardware. However I don't think we went overboard, I want Christophe to learn and understand the house; to know that if he collides with things it might hurt (trust me, we moved everything that could seriously injure him). I did not want to create a padded house for him.
The gates we ordered from Safety Super Store. We selected the Safeway gate by Kidco for a few reasons, good safety ratings, stylish and most important in our case it fit our extra narrow doorways. We ended up installing 2 of them one at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor and the other at the top of the basement stairs. I was concerned that our cats would not be able get pass the gates, all of them except for Cain have seemed to have figured it out. Able does not even slow down she just walks through the gate like it's not there.
I also read up on baby safety on the internet one article that I came across that I particularly liked was "How to accident-proof your kids" on the CNN website.
To celebrate Christophe new found freedom here is a little video of him cruising with the wall:
