Big Girl Carseat!

Andrina had a vaccine-only appointment today. Which she handled really well, she didn't cry very long and was easily soothed. However, that's besides the point. She was weighed and measured and she is finally, officially, too big for her infant car seat. She is weighing in at 20 lbs, 8 ounces (under the maximum weight of 22 lbs for the infant car seat) and is 29.5 inches tall (over the maximum height limit of 29 inches for the infant car seat). So that meant when we got home and Tom and I put her down for a nap, we broke out the convertible car seat and installed it in the suv. Which was actually very difficult. Installing the infant seat was a snap, it only goes in one way, rear facing and there were two latch attachments that we connected to the latch bars and tightened the strap (which we did after reading the instructions and following them exactly). Not so easy with the convertible car seat!

With the convertible car seat, it is for newborns through little kids up to 65 pounds, facing either backwards or forwards. Backwards for newborns and infants, forward facing for toddlers and preschoolers. Well, the car seat came in the box ready to be installed rear facing for newborns. The over-the-shoulder straps were at the lowest setting for newborns too. So we had to adjust those to a greater height for Andrina. Then we were trying to figure out how to rotate the latch-attachment straps for forward-facing placement. It was really difficult and the instruction manual said that you can't use the latch system with children over 48 pounds anyways-you have to use the car's seat belt to strap the car seat into the car. So we decided to do that since it will need to be like that eventually anyways. Which makes me wonder-what good is the latch system if it is not strong enough in a crash to keep a 48 pound child safe? I don't know. But I feel better knowing that it's installed with the car's seat belt since that's safer. I think it's safer... it seems logical that it is safer that way with the 48 pound latch weight limit...

The last bit of installing the car seat was also breaking out our suv's manual (which is responsibly in the car at all times, in the passenger's side door pocket) to find out if we had tether rings in the back. This is to allow the top part of the car seat to also be tethered in too-making it safer by having another point of attachment to the vehicle. Our vehicle has the tether rings too (it better-we paid enough for it). So we did that part as well. And then there was the fun part of watching Tom trying to move the car seat be shaking it roughly back-and-forth and side-to-side. He's a very strong guy and he could not move it at all! Yay! Nice and safe, and the instruction manual said it should not move more than one inch in any direction. Well, it didn't move at all! Of course, the force of a crash would be the real test and we pray that never happens.

Oh, and the bonus of Andrina now in a forward facing car seat. She can now watch educational DVDs too. I'm sure she'll enjoy seeing Elmo and the Baby Einstein puppets in the tv in the car!