These “baby-proofing” products are real rip-offs, at leastin my view.  I put my foot down andrefused to pay the exorbitant prices they were asking for “baby gates” that aresupposedly necessary to keep the kiddies from falling down (or climbing up???)the stairs.  I tried to explain thatabout a bazillion generations of kids were successfully raised without suchitems, but “grandma” would hear none of it and threatened to put her foot downon top of mine.  So, to prove my point(that they were rip-offs) I headed to the hardware store a few nights ago andspent about $30 on materials to custom build TWO of the darned things.

And I did it, too, and they turned out quite nice.  Now I must admit that it took me three nights,a total of about 15 hours, but any handyman who can work more than about 15minutes without a long break could easily have done it in three hours orless.  (I know that I could back when Iwas young and healthy.)

Of course that does not count the time required to removethe barbed-wire from the top.  Dawninsisted that I take that off.  I triedto explain that it would toughen the kids up while at the same time teachingthem some valuable “life lessons”, but she wasn’t buying any of that.

No wonder today’s kids aren’t as tough as we were!!!