The Playroom

We finally cleared out the dining room to make way for all the baby toys. (The picture above was from Thanksgiving '09 - yum!  It is the only "before" picture I can find of our dining room.) Our house was being overrun and we didn't like that the first thing you saw when entering front door was a huge mess of baby things. So, our dining room furniture was moved into the garage and the baby toys were moved into the new playroom.

We bought a mesh gate that expands to block off the opening between the two rooms and we used a regular baby gate to block off the kitchen entrance.  Now Ana and Javi have a totally baby-proofed area to crawl around in.  They seem to love it! 

I put most of the toys around the edge of the room and rotate which of the bigger toys go into the middle.   They crawl around (yikes!) and play with everything.  I still need a few more items to finish off the room (some toy baskets, something soft to hold books, and maybe moving some wall decorations from our "guestroom") but it's fully functional and fun as-is!  It's nice for me because the mesh gate and the wall of windows to the backyard make the room feel open to the rest of the house and to the outside.  I can also keep an eye on the babies if I need to do something in the kitchen.