Between all of your comments and an email exchange with Estelle, I ordered a car seat.

The Britax Boulevard, in Mosaic, on sale for $259.99. (Thank god that last 2006 child care savings account check arrived.)

I made the decision, in the end, over a feature I didn’t know about until Estelle mentioned it. The Boulevard doesn’t have those little slots you feed the shoulder straps through. The shoulder straps are adjusted by a bar (you turn a knob on the side of the seat)

How intuitive! You turn the knob until the straps are the right height for your baby. When he gets bigger, you turn it a little more. No more slipping the straps off the shoulder because they just don’t fit.

I can’t wait.

Oh, and we realized that we CAN use the center seat, we’d gotten either confused or bad advice previously. Doh!

(Estelle, next time we will try ordering from your friend; your second message arrived 10 minutes after I placed the order.)

Of course I will be publishing a review.

No day care decisions, but we got an email about an in home provider who sounds interesting, and found out that our public school system has a day care center that is in the process of NAEYC accreditation, and is having a parent information session on Saturday.