When my husband and I had our house built, we went with tile flooring on the main floor. We thought that wood flooring would require more upkeep and seeing visible scratches and dust bunnies just didn’t appeal to us. For the most part, we’re happy with our decision–it looks nice, it’s durable and the dust is not so visible. I bet my son would say otherwise! When he started crawling, we noticed that once he’d get to tile area, he would just stop. And then when he decided that he didn’t want to limit his crawling area, he developed what I would describe as this “crab crawl”. He’d crawl with his right foot planted on the floor while his leg was underneath. It looked quite funny, but then I decided that my son was very smart for adapting to the harsh surface! I felt really bad so I brainstormed what I could do to make his knees feel better when he ventured out onto the tile floor.

What I did was this: I took a pair of tube socks my son no longer wore and cut the foot part out, leaving a tube with both ends open. I slid it onto his knee which fit snuggly and inserted a nursing pad onto the knee area and voila! I made some knee pads from existing materials I had in the house. My son thought it was a little weird at first, but he soon adjusted to wearing them. Now that he’s walking, it’s great for cushioning his falls too. Now I know I can’t prevent all his bumps and bruises, but I’ll do what I can while I still can .