Musical Chairs

Or musical car seats as the case may be. Anyone with multiple young children probably knows this game. As a child gets bigger and older, they need to move into a different car seat to meet their needs. Now when you have three kids with three different sets of car seat needs, you get to play musical car seats periodically.

Before today, Anya was in an infant carrier - a Graco Snugride dating back to Jadzia's infant days and on its last child to be sure. Newer Snugrides have higher height limits, but the ones from 2004 are outgrown at 26 inches. If you recall my post about the WIC appointment a couple weeks ago, Anya was just over 26 inches which meant she needed a new seat. Jadzia, while still within the limits of her current seat, will remained harnessed as long as I can manage so instead of buying Anya a new seat, I bought Jadzia one. Jadzia moved into a Graco Nautilus which harnesses until 65lbs and then can become a booster until 100lbs. By moving her, she freed up the Fisher Price Safety Voyage for Inara to move into which freed up the Graco ComfortSport for Anya to move into. And the Snugride can now be retired.

Jadzia was very excited about her new car seat and kept a vigilant eye on me while I assembled and adjusted the straps accordingly. After it was ready, I took it out to the van for the acrobatic feat that is uninstalling and reinstalling car seats. Since every kid was moving to a new seat, every seat had to be moved from it's spot. Have you ever installed a car seat? Getting it in place is the easy part, it's the tightening it down so it can't possibly move that's the acrobatic part. Now multiply that by 3 and I was sweating and tired by the time it was all said and done. Of course in true Mommy-brain fashion, I installed and locked down Inara's seat without having her sit in it to adjust the height of the shoulder straps. Since the straps secure in the back of the seat, which was now firmly pressed into the seat of the van, it's somewhat difficult to readjust said straps without taking the car seat back out.

I brought the kids out intending to adjust all the straps and then we'd walk to the mailbox and check the mail. Jadzia's seat had already been adjusted but she wanted to have car seat fun like her sisters so she was busy strapping herself in while I adjusted the others. As I finished and was about to get them all out so we could check the mail, the rain started. Somehow walking in the rain with three kids that were already conveniently strapped into the car seemed stupid. So we drove the tenth of a mile to the mailbox and back.