Up to this point I would rely on either his bouncy chair (when he was younger/smaller) and then his walker to keep him somewhat contained if I needed to leave his presence momentarily. Of course the bouncy chair lost it's usability quickly, and the walker never really put a total stop to his mischief-making when I was out of the room. Generally I would come back and find that he had pulled something off of a shelf or knocked something over in my absence. You can see then why this new buy has me so excited.
For his part MR doesn't seem to notice that this device is meant to hinder his wanderings (yet). He did notice that it prevented him from reaching the on/off button on the television, which he attempted to rectify by chewing on the offending gate panel. Other than that he seems to enjoy having his own space where he is generally safe from mommy's 'No, don't touch that's'. And I am glad that now I have somewhere I can place MR and not find him gnawing on the cat's scratching post thirty seconds later (yes, this has happened).
Oh, and as a side note to go with the above picture- the mister understands the word monkey. He has two stuffed monkey dolls (one being pictured), and about a week ago he started responding to the word monkey by going and finding one of the two. This is particularly humorous because BL's dad, MR's Grandpa, tends to use monkey as a curse word. Random, I know, and if I attempted to explain it you still wouldn't get it. So for monkey to be one of the words MR so clearly understands it should be interesting next time he is around Grandpa.
