Watergate, Lewinskygate, Nipplegate and now - Baby Gate

Ever since Liam started crawling and made his first hair-raising attempt at plunging headfirst down the stairs, we've been in Baby Gate Mode. We need a hardware-mounted fixture for the top of the stairs; easier said than done. I made a run to the store early in the week and brought home the first gate I saw, more or less, figuring they'd all be the same. Wrong. We live in an old house, which means we have several issues to deal with.

First, we have plaster walls, and the gates can't be mounted in plaster unless there's a stud behind it. Second, we have a spindle at the top of the stairs that has a square base, but is turned the rest of the way up; i.e. there's no flat surface on which to mount the latch. Third, we have high baseboards, and gates can't be mounted on baseboards. The first gate came out of the box so that we could read the instruction manual, but quickly went back in.

Today I brought home another gate, one that will mount above the baseboard. But, we've still got to be lucky to find a stud in the wall directly opposite the top spindle (if we don't, this gate will also need to be returned, and we'll need to spend three times as much to buy one that mounts at an angle from a specialty store); and Chad is off to Home Depot tomorrow to try to rig something up on the spindle that will allow the latch to mount to it. In the meantime, our poor little monkey has been penned into his room when we're upstairs, using a hand-me-down pressure gate we have from friends. I feel like we're treating him like an animal, but if I have to choose between this and an injured baby, well... life on the farm ain't that bad after all. And honestly, Liam hasn't even really noticed it.

Captain, on the other hand, is plenty miffed. Today I put the gate up and left Liam in his room while I was in the bathroom getting ready for the day. Captain was in Liam's room when I put the gate up, and when he was ready to leave, he sat on the dresser staring at it disdainfully for an awfully long time before using it as a springboard to get out the door. Seems that the extra effort that's now required for him to get around is a major inconvenience. Then again... what part of Liam's being here hasn't been??