Car Seats

So, a few weeks ago we looked into getting Jeffrey a bigger car seat. That's right. Bigger. This is yet another thing that we have never experienced with our other two kids. They were both little skinny babies and did not grow out of their infant carrier before the age of one, which was the then recommended advice, to be rear facing until at least age 1 or a certain weight.

Well, Jeffrey is only about 5 pounds shy of outweighing the recommended weight on his infant carrier. I know that they make infant carriers that go higher, but really...I don't know about you, but lugging 30+ pounds on my arm is NOT going to happen. Aside from that, when I first looked at infant carriers I kept thinking, "Hey, two kids in the same range, I won't need an infant carrier that goes higher. That's for OTHER people..." hehehe...

So, we looked and looked and looked at different car seats. Initially I wanted a convertible car seat that would last even through the, I'm almost big enough to just use a seat belt but not quite phase...meaning that they go from rear facing 5lbs to forward facing 100 lbs.

Shane felt that by that time he would be 8 or 9 and what 8 or 9 year old still wants to be in a 5 point harness... I agreed, so we turned our attention to the seats that had lower weight ranges but were still convertible, and then figured when he got to the point where he needed the other kind of booster seat, we could just get the cheap ones that only reposition the seat belt.

One store we went to had two seats on clearance that had been floor models. One older model (and by "older" I mean one or two years) was a Britax something or other that we probably would've gotten if it hadn't been in a girl print, because it was over a 100.00 off retail price. The other one was an evenflo and was also about 100.00 off, and was only 50.

So we got the evenflo carseat for one of our vehicles. It is really nice. Jeffrey LOVES it. When we bought it we even thought, yay, it was so cheap we can get another nicer car seat for the other vehicle.

That meant we had to look and research again. Shane really liked the Graco My 65. I thought it looked nice so we went ahead and ordered it. It looks like this:

Jeffrey HATED it. HATED. IT. We're talking, you sit him in the seat without even putting the straps on and he would start screaming and arching his back to get out. We ordered it from Target though, and still had the invoice, so we returned it. While we were there we thought we would try out the car seats they had and sat Jeffrey in all of them. He was fine and happy just like normal, so we sat him in the floor model My 65 that was identical to his... instant crying. Shane and I just looked at each other and shook our heads. I don't know what it is about that seat, but you'd think there were tacks in the bottom or something.

Since we knew that Jeffrey loved his evenflo car seat we then set out to find the current model of that seat. We had no idea what it was called or model or anything, so we just browsed and then found the evenflo triumph 65LX.

This seat is almost identical to the seat he currently uses. Sounds like a lot of work just to make a baby happy. A happy baby in the car...definitely worth it. :)

First world problem is that we felt like we had to have two car seats. Still, they are a PAIN to get in and out of the car. They are also fairly heavy and bulky to carry anywhere unless you get the Sunshine Kids one that is meant to be carried on your back and even has straps to let you.

Gone are the days of just snapping in the infant carrier to it's base or running the seatbelt across. The hard part of getting the newer evenflo carseat was they were difficult to find in the store. I really didn't want to just buy one after our last carseat fiasco, so I was so happy when we were in Wal Mart and they had one to try and even one there. It was the right price so we bought it. Now we are all happy. :)

That is my tale of the two new car seats.