Jillsie's New Ride

How cute is that?

My daughter recently hit the weight limit on her infant car seat, so it was off to the stores here to try to purchase a new seat for her. I say "try" since the kindly German salesman actually refused a 300Euro sale, insisting Jillsie was perfectly safe in her infant seat. Here's the problem: Germans don't use the convertible seats. They use larger infant seats that have a higher weight limit and last (rear-facing) until the child is 1 year old. Then they purchase a front-facing seat for the child to use from the 1-year mark onward. Jillsie cannot use one of the German forward-facing seats yet, since she is only 8 months old. She has to face backwards. So, I could either buy a larger German infant seat to use for 4 months and then buy a German forward-facing seat (for about 600Euro total), or I could leave her in her current infant seat, even though she is over the weight limit. The salesguy insisted she would be perfectly safe this way, and part of me believed him.

BUT. The other part of me, the part that is extremely paranoid when it comes to my child's safety, won out. So, after talking with a German friend who swears by the Britax brand (and not the German ones) I decided to go with my gut and order online the convertible carseat I had researched long long ago to be the safest anyway: The Britax Roundabout. Jillsie can ride in it rear-facing till she is a year, and then forward-facing until she is 40 pounds or so. Hooray!

Alas, though the seat was on sale on many sites, none of those sites would mail it to me. But I finally found one who would (http://www.elitecarseats.com/) though the seat was not on sale and the shipping was outrageous. However, less than a week later, it arrived at my mailbox, and after reading the manual for 30 minutes, I was able to install it quite easily in less than ten minutes.

Go, Gutsy Mom!

I am going to look at the success of the carseat purchase and installation as the counterbalance to the fact that one of my beloved dogs has peed on the downstairs carpet for the third time since my husband left for his trip. I know they miss him, too, but this is not helping...

I'm off to steam clean.