There is nothing more important than the safety of our children, but omfg, car seats are THE WORST.
Maybe I’m only saying this because I spent over five hours wrestling with car seats today, but that doesn’t make it less true. I spent FIVE HOURS wrestling with car seats in one day. It doesn’t get much worse than that.
I figured out how to fit three seats across my backseat after months of research, shopping and plotting. I installed them halfway through my last pregnancy just to make sure they’d work and then left all three in the car because there was no way I ever wanted to do that again.
But baby Mary is outgrowing her infant seat and Colum is more than ready for a booster. So all I needed to do was turn Colum’s old seat rear-facing and put the extra-narrow booster that finally went on sale in place of the baby bucket seat. Easy peasy.
Two hours, a bag of garbage and a seat full of crumbs later, the fancy-pants new booster didn’t fit. It wasn’t even close. Colum was late for his t-ball game and I was standing in the driveway amidst $900 worth of child safety seats that couldn’t keep my kids safe. My husband wound up driving Colum in Irene’s seat while I walked with the girls.
Then, since the car wasn’t doing the kids and I a whole lot of good, he took the car for the rest of the afternoon. I then walked all three kids from the baseball diamonds to my parents house, but told the husband to please bring all the car seats there because I had a new plan.
Over an hour later I’d managed to cram the booster between the two car seats and even installed the rear-facing seat without the manual. Woot! Things were looking up … until someone actually tried to sit in the front seat. Damn, that rear-facing position takes up a lot of space.
We drove home like that anyway, but as soon as the kids hit their pillows I needed to be back out there. This time I was going to turn Irene’s seat rear-facing for Mary, move Irene to Colum’s seat and Colum to the booster. We’ll just put the booster in the middle, no, try that side, no, try the other side. Okay, perfect. Wait. What’s that? You want to be able to close the door? All the way? Fine. I’ll try again.
And I did. I tried again and again until I finally came up with a configuration that works. It’s a squeeze, but all the seats are safely and securely installed and they are NEVER coming out.
Also. The car seat safety police will be happy because baby Mary will be rear-facing until Colum no longer needs a booster. There is no way I’m ever moving those seats again.
What are your worst car seat stories? I know you have some.
About Rebecca
Gah… I’m not looking forward to this. Although, we have the benefit of our first born now hitting all the requirements for no car/booster seats, so there’s that. I can’t imagine he’ll be especially happy though about squeezing in the middle… I know I wasn’t when I had to do it as a kid! And we didn’t even have seats back then! How, oh how, did we ever survive?
Michelle Scrimgeour-Brown´s last [type] ..Is this thing on??
Oy. I feel for you. I swear, this is one of the reasons that I only wanted two kids. Of course, then we bought a 6-seater car, but still.
karengreeners´s last [type] ..I finished a craft! [Alternate Title: Holy shit! I finished a craft!]
This is one reason we stopped at 2. Though we had a hell of a time with the first, getting a seat we could put in and have a passenger in our compact car.
Lisa´s last [type] ..May 4, 2012
I was hoping no news was good news…..hope you had lots of liquor on hand to soothe your nerves.
The rear facing seat is the biggest problem. I loved our old car but if the rear facing seat was behind me, then my knees were on the dashboard (containing the airbag) not good. We bough a very large car due to the need for a 1-2 yr rear facing seat.
Ah well, anything for the kids. Right?
One word: Minivan.
hi Thank you so much 4 this video ..its really hupflel .. coz my family visiting me soon from back home and i have 2 sisters, 3 years old and 2 months old,, i dont know how to install it or deal with it ( i mean the baby seat) .. i was asking a lots of mothers who had a car and baby seat to tech me how its work in the street!! but they didn’t help me they look at me as a stranger and no answer !! . but really you help me with your video . thank you so much,one from saudi : )