Car Seat

I like the fact that Baby is little.  This means that she is easier to carry.  She often falls asleep in her carseat, so we just keep her in it and place her somewhere until she wakes up.  Very convenient.  This also means that she hasn't outgrown her carseat, per se.  The car seat goes up to 22 pounds, and Baby is somewhere around 17 pounds.  She has a whole 5 pounds to go!  In Baby weight, it could take a while to get there (Okay, so her length is average and her feet hang off the edge, but she still looks comfortable). 

However, she is one year old now (where did the time go?) and we need to switch her to a different carseat.  I know she will really enjoy facing forward and not reclining all the time.  She'll be such a big girl.

I've attempted looking into a new carseat, but have no idea what I am doing.  Target has really cool color coded floors in their carseat aisle that tell you which carseats to look at for which age.  In Baby's range, there are limited choices.  That are really expensive.  I mean really.

Husband and I are also torn over what to do.   In terms of daycare and driving her, that is.  Usually, Husband drops off Baby in the morning, handing her over in her carseat.  Daycare uses the carseat if needed during the day, and I pick her and her carseat up in the afternoons.

When we switch to the next carseats, I don't think it will be that simple.  Or it might be simpler.  I have no idea.

Daycare has the bigger carseats, so we won't need to drop one off with Baby every day like we do now.  That will be nice.

The problem is that only one of us will have the carseat in his or her car.  How do we handle that?  Do we get two?  We're looking at spending a few hundred dollars, then.  That's a lot of money!

Potentially, we could drop the carseat off at daycare every day and switch it back and forth.  The problem with this is that I don't know how hard it is to install and uninstall a toddler carseat.  The infant one was nice because it had a base that you click it into.  Then you were set to go.  If you didn't have the base, it had spots for the seatbelt to strap it down.  Nice and Easy.

I have no idea how the older carseats work.  They just look so huge and bulky to me, and I think it will be a big ordeal to move one from car to car every day.

Sometimes I wish we were back in the fifties or some other era where parents just held their children.  None of this fancy, bulky, heavy, carseat business.

I suppose safety is important, though.

In the meantime, I'll keep trudging through the carseat aisles until I finally figure this thing out.