This, for me, is the most interesting part of your comment:

> our toddler would unlock and open the front door, go outside (at night!), take pictures of the house, go back in, close and lock the door, and go back into his bed.

Did you ever ask your toddler why they did this? The thought process, for a toddler, to do that, to want a photo of the outside of the house at night enough to do that. That's some high level curiosity, worth fostering.

One of mine at that age would have had that level of quirkiness, but probably would have been too scared of "the dark" (also, our house already had a security system installed when we bought it, which we still set off accidentally every now and then, so the kids would probably have known that as well).