LizaWasHere

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.

As we approach Noah’s birthday and his 12 month doctor visit, I’m becoming car seat obsessed.

You see, at his 9 month doctor visit, he was measured at 30.5″ tall, so we are close approaching the 32″ height limit on his “baby bucket” car seat, which we love.

And I hate his other car seat. It’s an evenflo titan, and it was a very generous hand-me-down, but it really doesn’t fit my tall boy. This weekend, I noticed that the belt slipped off of his shoulder, and I wasn’t able to tighten it enough to stay on — it’s helaciously difficult to tighten, and even as tight as I could manage, he could wiggle one shoulder loose, I think because the strap slot is so low. But the next one up is only supposed to be used forward facing, and he’s too young to be forward facing. (Not just my opinion, but actually under the law.)

So we need 1 new seat ASAP and another one pretty soon after that.

Because I used to rely on Consumer Reports for these kinds of things, and it freaks me out that they retracted their car seat test results and makes me wonder about their other car seat test results, I’m not going with their pick. Plus they like the evenflo titan, which, as I mentioned, I loathe.

I’m a regular reader of Estelle’s blog, and she writes often and knowledgeably about car seats. When Noah outgrew his first car seat, I asked her a few questions before buying the one he’s about to outgrow, so it made sense to turn to her again. Plus Charlie is even bigger than Noah. If Charlie is comfortable, the seat will probably work for Noah.
So Britax. But Marathon? Decathalon? Boulevard? How are they different? Besides price? Do we need to get the same thing?

Those are the 3 options because they all go to 65 lbs, and it would be nice not to have to buy another car seat for Noah until he starts kindergarten.

The Boulevard is the most expensive, clocking in retail at $299. But it has these side impact protection wing-thingies that really seem like they would do a good job protecting a child’s skull in a side impact crash. And I have an older car without side air bags.

The Decathalon’s biggest selling points seem to be more adjustability in the crotch and a push button tightening system, not a lever (harder for clever baby to loosen). But the message boards at car-seat.org include a lot of complaints that parents have trouble with sticky buttons.

The Marathon is the cheapest (not cheap: MSRP = $269), but the only differences seem to be lever vs button harness-adjuster and fewer crotch tabs. Is that a big issue?
Here’s what I’m trying to decide:

• How important is the side impact thing? I have an older car without rear airbags or LATCH, so Noah is essentially stuck in the rear-passenger position, not the middle rear. That makes me want the side impact protection. Am I just being paranoid?
• Is Jill’s car sufficiently safer than mine that if the side impact thing is important, we would be comfortable with a different car seat in her car?
• Should we get one of these (above), whatever we decide, wait until Noah fully outgrows his infant seat (I’m guessing March-ish) and get one of the forward-facing only, good all the way to 80 lbs, Britax Regents instead? (MSRP = $269).

I don’t know.

I just know that I want Noah to be safe, and I hate the titan. (And I don’t think he is safe. We are back to playing car seat runaround until we decide and buy something. And install it with the help of a certified trained car seat person.)

Ugh.

I’ve been thinking about doing one of those NPR This I Believe essays since they first re-launched the project. But on what topic? It hit me last week. Oh, Levi’s Moms? This one is especially for you.

I believe in the power of persistence, and of the word never, but not the way you probably think.

I believe that the things you think you hate or fear persist in your life, and determine your future. “Never” is like a double-dog-dare to the universe.

I have a perfect record of doing the things I said I would NEVER do. 100%. I was NEVER going to move home to Wisconsin as an adult, never going to law school, never going to work in politics, never going to date another woman, never going to live in Virginia, and certainly never going to live any further into the south.

I moved back to Wisconsin at 22 and stayed until 28. Now that I have a son, I’m trying to figure out how to move back again. Oh, and I moved there at 22 to go to law school. I spent most of my time in law school doing political organizing, and when I left Wisconsin at 28, it was to move to Washington DC, to work in politics.

Actually, I moved to Maryland, and I fought bitterly with my then-boyfriend about the hypothetical future possibility of living in Virginia. After we hypothetically got married and had hypothetical children and needed to be in a good hypothetical school district.

“Never!” I swore, “There are 2 perfectly good progressive jurisdictions right here. Why would we live in Virginia?”

Three years later, I took a job 45 minutes into Virginia (with no traffic) and drove the “reverse commute” from my house in DC. When my car was totaled in my third rear-ender in 10 months, the first words out of my mouth were, “We should just *#$@% move to Reston!”

We, at the time of that move, was me and my not-legally-married-wife. We moved to Virginia just after Virginia passed what were, at the time, the most hostile anti-gay laws in the US.

A year later, when the recruiter called and asked me to talk to a company in Atlanta, I laughed and almost hung up on him. When I told my wife about it, she also said The N Word. But at 2 am a few days later, she was online surfing real estate ads, showing me the houses in the neighborhood where friends of friends lived. They were nice houses, not much more expensive than our 4th floor, walk-up condo in Reston, Virginia. Still thinking “never,” we flew down, fell in love with the housing market, and in short order, found ourselves moving to Atlanta.

I try to avoid using the word “never” now, but of course I still have that visceral reaction sometimes. When I catch myself thinking “never” it’s a flag for me to look at what it is drawing me towards that thing, because I’m going to do it eventually, ready or not.

This, I believe.

I am SOOOOOOOO ready to be done pumping. Don’t get me wrong, it was fine to do, I have no regrets. And in fact, I’m incredibly proud of the fact that I was able to feed Noah from my own body for so long, with hardly any supplementing.

But while nursing is lovely and bonding and relaxing and peaceful etc etc, pumping is something I’ve been putting up with, and I am EXCITED to be almost done.

We won’t be going cold turkey (at least not yet) on the nursing. For the time being, he’ll still nurse when he wakes up and when he goes to bed at night. Those will taper off at some tbd point in the not terribly distant future, but neither of us is ready to give them up yet.

But Noah will drink cow’s milk during the day, beginning at day care the week after his birthday. And I will no longer be pumping on a regular basis. (Hopefully ever!)

Thank you everyone who left comments, called, or emailed with offers to be ventees. I really appreciate it, and the next time I need it, one or more of you will probably hear from me.