The baby gate from ....... Babies R Us

So when the girls started moving we had to put up baby gates. We have a rather large stairway so there is only a select few that fit our landing. So we bought this one first. While the gate itself is very good, the latch was horrible and broke within the first few days. Note to self read the reviews before purchasing. So much to my wife's chagrin, it has stayed basically broken for the entire year. Before you hang me understand it still closed in place and kept the girls safe, but did not work exactly how it was intended, and over time of course it got worse.

So my loving parents kept the girls Friday night and most of the day Saturday, giving us time to finish Christmas decorations and to clean the house in preparation for hosting Thanksgiving. This also included me fixing the gate.

So on Saturday morning, I set off to get a new gate and this is about how it went.

12:00 - Leave for Target
12:30 - Leave Target defeated because they have no gates, and if they did, they did a good job of hiding them, and if they have employees that help you find stuff they did a good job of hiding those too.
12:30 - Head towards Babies R Us
1:00 - Success...find perfect gate with glass front so girls cannot shake the gate like they love to do.
1:30 - Go to Lowe's and get proper tools to hang gate so I do not have to borrow my dads tools.
2:00 - Arrive home victorious with perfect gate and begin to unbox.
2:30 - Finally decide to measure staircase width and find out that the 42in max gate we got will not fit the 50 inch opening. Sigh in frustration and defeat.
4:00 - Head out with wife to return perfect gate and get another one.
4:30 - Arrive at Babies R Us where we find not so perfect gates that will fit our 50in opening. Wife also suggests we buy mounting kit, I disagree saying it is not needed.
5:15 - Arrive home and begin to try to install new pressure mounted gate.
5:30 - After some frustration relize the gate is broken and most likely we need a mounting kit.
6:00 - Leave for dinner with parents.
7:30 - Arrive home with parents where my dad will assist me in trying to hang the other gate that we bought as a backup.
8:00 - Realize for this one we really need to have a mounting kit.
8:20 - Arrive at lowes -- no mounting bracket
8:35 - Arrive at walmart -- no mounting bracket
8:45 - Call target -- no mounting bracket
9:00 - Call Home Depot -- closed
9:05 - BBB -- no gates at all
9:20 - Arrive home in pure defeat, dreading the wife's I told you so (which thankfully she did not give me, but I know she was thinking).

So Sunday morning, set off again for Babies R Us to take back both gates we have and find another one.

12:30 - Arrive at Babies R Us and return both gates
12:45 - Find better option for gate, but Babies R Us does not carry the extension kit needed for the 50in stairway, continue to look.
1:15 - Ask customer service to call toys r us in hoover to see if they carry the part. The lady dials the number and hands me the phone (awesome customer service, I could have done that on my cell phone)
1:30 - In frustration purchase the same gate we had (hopefully not broken) along with a mounting kit ($40 frickin bucks)
2:15 - Arrive home
2:45 - After eating lunch begin to install mounting kit.
4:30 - Mounting kit and gate are finally installed.
4:31 - Realize I hate the gate and that it will have to due for now, but will in the near future I will have to install another gate.
4:35 - Both girls start to shake the gate, which is why the glass gate would have been awesome.

Next stop, the gate to our real fence outside...I will make sure to do better planning this time.