Baby Containment: A Necessary Evil.

I learned pretty quick that first day a loose toddler is a dangerous thing. The only thing he was really interested in was pulling the cigarette lighter out (they still make those?), putting it in his mouth, grabbing at the swinging keys and pulling on the gear shift. All things that are cute maybe when you're parked, but they become dangerously unnerving when you're actually driving. So, I let my inner engineering spirit loose and we ended up with this:

Which is the table lowered and covered in cushions with Colt's car seat belted to the cab-over ladder I found stashed in the RV. Pretty neat, huh?  Things were going really well until 20 minutes in to it what I can only term "catastrophic failure of the engineering design" happened and he and the contraption both went ass over tea kettle on to the ground. He was pretty shook up, but the only real damage was a skinned up left nostril, which scabbed over really well and makes him look like a real bad-ass. It also went pretty well with the steering wheel imprint on his forehead from the day before. The scab is nearly gone and you can't even really tell it was ever there.

Good news though: I was able to beef-up my design and we have had 12 consecutive crash-free days. Score.