Free Range Babies: On the Topic of Babies, Dog Crates, and Species Confusion

I'm sure you have heard newly-married people talk about getting a pet in order to "practice" for having children.  I love my fur babies as much as the next animal-lover, but believe me when I say: no matter how much you anthropomorphize your animals, pet-care responsibilities cannot compare to the gruelling undertaking of child-rearing*.

That being said, I am noticing many disturbing parallelisms between pet care and child care.  I have already told you that Brooke eats as much dog food as she can sneak, and that she uses the dog water bowl as a self-serve fountain.  She spends a lot of time lounging (and sometimes "reading") in the dog beds that are sporadically placed throughout the house.  Her favored toys are the dogs' Kong balls.  Heck, she even has had numerous pee (and poop!) accidents on the floor...

And then there is her fascination with the dog crates.  Thinking back, I can remember that Alyssa loved to pretend she was a dog and be "locked" into the dog crates.  Brooke tries to get into the dog crates, too.  She likes to put her little boyfriend into them and then close the door.  Dog crate...babies...dog crate...babies....

Today and every day, the babies range freely throughout the house, wreaking havoc and inciting riots (amongst themselves) in all rooms.  The dogs and I basically spend all day following them around, cleaning up messes and breaking up baby fights---over the items comprising the messes.  It is exhausting.

At various points, I have tried to corral the babies into certain areas for structured playing...with HUMAN BABY TOYS, of which we have various and sundry.  They laughed in the face of confinement and devoted all of their time and energy to escape.  They were always successful.  The only way to lock them down securely was making a continuous circle out of the baby fence.  Sure, they were contained, but they were also severely pissed and spent most of their time attacking one another, which led to us renaming the "play pen area," the Octogon...which is the ring used in Ultimate Fighting (UFC), where any type of fighting, grappling, boxing, martial arts, or wrestling is fair game and it is okay to punch and hit anywhere on the body.  It is pretty extreme...and the babies were fighting just as dirty.


And so, the babies made a mockery of my attempts at baby enclosure.  Since then, it has been utter chaos, which makes me think: If the dogs behaved like this, where would they go? ...

What ever happened to the concept of putting babies into a playpen?  It is a "crate" for babies.  It is brilliant.  My mom comes from a family of six and remembers the babies spending lots of time in their playpens.  Really, how else could a mother handle that many children of various ages?

It turns out that I, too, was a playpen baby.  My mom was talking about it with me today, and she told me (get this!) that she was actually able to go to the bathroom by herself and do housework while I played safely nearby in the playpen!  When did the playpen go out of style?  Why do we insist on free ranging our babies to the detriment of our sanity?

I'm about to move the Pack N Plays out into the living areas during playtime and experiment with "baby crating."  Instead of toys, maybe I will just throw some dog bones and balls in there with them...

*and I think it has everything to do with the CRATE.