For me, a self-admitted neurotic freak, the rest of this process likely will be incredibly fulfilling.

Over the next week or so, I’ll install drawer and cabinet anchors, lock up all of our cleaning solutions and protect any remaining naked AC outlets with plastic covers (I got most of ‘em when L first started crawling).

At some point, I suppose I also could put some sort of cord retracting device on our blind pulls, affix a cantilevered ledge/shield-thingy to our stove and install one of those toilet locks on our toilets. After looking through catalogs such as One Step Ahead, I see there is no shortage of items parents can buy to make themselves feel like they’re protecting baby from the dangers of home.

Still, despite my neuroses, I can’t help but wonder how much of this whole “baby-proofing” thing can be eliminated with the simple act of good parenting.

Do we really need drawer and cabinet anchors when we can just watch the baby to make sure she doesn’t get into stuff she’s not supposed to touch? Do we really need a special ledge/shield-thingy on our stove when we can just watch her to make sure she doesn’t pull down the pot of boiling water?

Oh, and why can’t we just cover those outlets with our hands when the baby gets close?

Yes, these provisions make the whole job of chasing after baby a lot easier. And, yes, I admit that I’ve bought into the whole idea of buying this stuff in spades. But considering the way this subset of the baby industrial complex keeps parental interests in mind, perhaps the process should be called “parent-proofing” instead.

First and foremost, this new baby—still named L, of course—has ditched the cold (and congestion) that was bugging her before we took off, and is now talking and cooing and yapping like always. She’s also got three new teeth, bringing her current total to five.

What’s more, the kid is eminently more mobile. Before our trip, the extent of her ambulation was army-crawling, during which she’d stagger across the floor like a zombie from some B-rate horror flick. Now, the kid is all-out crawling on all fours; because she still swaggers a bit when she moves, she reminds me of Smeagol from the “Lord of the Rings” films.

(As an aside, we left and the whole mobility thing was a cute little sideshow. The baby is now so fast and so agile that Powergirl and I have rearranged our Saturday to make a special trip to the mall for gates and other baby-proofing accoutrements.)

Of all this new stuff, perhaps my favorite development is her new ability to play catch. Yes, folks, you read that correctly: my eight-month-old daughter can play catch.

Granted, she doesn’t exactly “catch” the ball/stuffed triangle/squeezy-honky thing in mid-air. But once the object lands in her vicinity, she leans over, grabs it and fires it back in my general direction every time.

I’m no baseball scout, but I’d say she’s throwing with a gun like Mets shortstop Jose Reyes. Luckily, neither her hamstrings nor her intelligence resemble the lackadaisical and oft-injured Reyes in any way, shape or form (apologies there to my wife, who is a die-hard Mets fan; I like the Yankees and we have what we like to describe as an “inter-fanatical” relationship).

The bottom line: this post-Vegas L certainly is different than the pre-Vegas one.

All the baby guidebooks warned us development would accelerate rapidly after 7 months or so. I just don’t think we expected the differences to be so dramatic.