The Second Challenge: Safety, Part 3

Night Time
V loves hot drinks. She loves hot tea, coffee, and cocoa and calls them all "Hot". I figure out the difference between them depending on whether she is pointing at the tea kettle, the coffee pot, or pulling the powdered chocolate out of the pantry. Many times she watched me turn on the stove to heat the water in the kettle for a cup of tea. She watched as I took out a tea bag and brought out the sugar bowl and a spoon. Then one night as I slept, I heard a noise downstairs and looked at the clock beside my bed. It was about midnight. I got out of bed and went to the top of the stairs where I could see that the light was on in my kitchen. Curious, I went down stairs and found V sitting at the kitchen table with a coloring book and crayons, happily coloring as she patiently waited for the water to boil. There on my kitchen counter sat a tea bag, the sugar bowl, a mug and a spoon. I looked at my stove and realized how close to disaster we had come. V had turned on the knob to heat the oven instead of the burner, thank goodness. A dishtowel lay carelessly across the counter, it's edge resting on one of the stove burners and I could see how easily a fire would have started in my kitchen if she had turned the knob for the burner instead of the oven, as she had meant to. That is not even considering the real possibility of a serious burn if the water had boiled and she had attempted to pour it into the mug. V had not learned when to stop pouring when her cup is full and she still hasn't. I put everything away and turned off the oven, thankful that disaster had been avoided, and a little bit impressed that she had learned all the steps to making a cup a tea, and took V back to bed. The next day I unscrewed her door knob and replaced it so that the lock faced out into the hall instead of into her bedroom, and I locked her bedroom door at bedtime. I have done so ever since, to prevent her from wandering the house while I sleep and getting into danger. If she gets up in the night, I hear her over the baby monitor that I use, and she will knock on her door to let me know that I am wanted for help.
I know of a family who has hired a caregiver to spend the night in their son's room to keep him safe while the family sleeps at night. I have visited group homes where there are night shift staff that sit in the hall watching video monitors of the clients rooms to ensure their safety. When our kitchen incident occured, I was a single mom, working full time and I did not have the resources to hire someone to watch over V at night, so my solution was practical and affordable for me.