The long saga of the car seat.

The search for the perfect car seat has finally ended. It was seriously ridiculous. So. Much. Research. (Of course I was also trying to find one that is non-toxic. Flame retardant chemicals are heinous. Hence us preferring that there are none in our mattresses, clothing, etc.)

We had one of those silly super annoying and bulky carry around infant car seats for Akilah when she was a baby. Then it was put into storage and got all moldy beyond repair. Because kids these days have to be in car seats until they are ready for middle school, we did not have one for Kaia (Akilah is still using the one we got after the infant one.)

This time around I did not want to even deal with the infant only bucket seat. I have learned my lesson! I feel that it is incredibly wasteful to have a seat that only serves a child for one year, especially considering we are done having children. Plus I do not want to be able to take it out of the car while the child is still in it. (And our backs thank me.)

So the seat we now have for Kaia in our car is a made in the USA (YAAAAY!) Britax convertible seat that both rear and forward faces and goes up to 70 pounds. (Because now kids have to rear face for freaking EVER. EVER equals at least 2 years, but much longer than that is recommended. If that was the case with Akilah we would have never gone anywhere. She despised the car, it was pure torture to go anywhere when she was a baby. We turned her seat around forward facing when she was 11 months old.) I am curious how this will all actually pan out for Kaia, seeing as our children tend to be tall. Who wants their legs shoved into their eyeballs while riding backwards in a car? No thanks.

The seat we have for the Element was even more complicated to find because of the way the car doors open. It is next to impossible to get a child out of a rear facing car seat in an Element!!! No joke. I had to climb in, half sit/stand in Akilah's seat and quickly extract Kaia from her temporary seat (an infant seat we borrowed from a friend while we went through this lengthy research process.) After a crap ton of more research I found one of only two seats on the market that actually rotate in it's base. (Not only is the other one uber expensive, but it requires two different seats; one for an infant and one for a toddler. There is no way we were going with that one! SO that left us with the Combi Zeus 360 swiveling convertible car seat you see pictured below. It is really ingenious the way it rotates around! Sadly, however, it is not usable for nearly as long as the one in our car because it only goes up to 40 pounds.

It took me a REALLY long time to figure out how to work the darn thing!!! (I don't do written instructional manuals very well. At. All.)

Figuring it all out.

In the Element! A rear facing sleeping beauty. Look at those cheeks!

Forward facing so I can actually put Kaia in the car! Yay! Getting all situated to go on an adventure. (Akilah used to make this same face, looking like she was trying to talk.)

Sisters!!!

Perhaps this now means my primary vehicle will be the Element because getting the kiddos in and out is so super easy! (I stayed as far away from it as possible the entire time I was pregnant because it was one big nausea inducing mobile.)

Yes... an entire crazy post about car seats because it consumed so very much of my life...