I write Growing Up at Home from a house with two kids five years apart and a hallway that squeaks in all the wrong places. Most of what I know here I learned by doing it badly first, which is why the mistakes stay in the articles.
Installing a gate at the top of the stairs was the easy part. Living with it every single day, arms full of laundry and a toddler underfoot, turned out to be its own ongoing project.
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We spent months getting the nursery exactly right, and for the first four months our son basically lived in a bassinet next…