Favorite Moments Friday

Man I have been really bad at this whole Favorite Moments Friday lately.  In fact, my last Favorite Moments post? November 7th.  Yeah, I am bad.

So let's start with November: 

• Superman stayed with his first real babysitter so hubby and I could go to a movie.  It was fabulous! Then a couple weeks later the babysitter came back and hubby and I went to the Blazer's game.  It is so nice to have a babysitter that we can count on.
• I found out that I am pregnant with baby #2 and Superman is going to be a big brother!
• Superman started to teeth his molars this month.  They wouldn't come in till the end of next month, but the pain lasted all month long.
• We ditched the bucket seat and Superman is now in a convertible seat.  He is a growing boy!
• We headed to Kansas City for Thanksgiving.  It was so much fun to see Superman play with his cousins.  We also went and got family pictures taken...they turned out great!  The only downside to the trip was having to fly with a little one that really just wanted to get down and play and not stay seated in our laps.  Thank goodness for direct flights.

December 

•  Teething is driving me insane and causing Superman so.much.pain!  
• We started two new traditions...going to the Oregon Zoo's Zoo Lights and Portland International Raceway lights.  The Zoo Lights was super cold, but a whole lot of fun.  Superman liked the lights more than I thought he would, thus making the experience that much more enjoyable for us.   The lights at the raceway were also a lot of fun.  We tried taking Superman out of his car seat so he could see them better, but he just wanted to play with the door.  So I put him back in his car seat and angled his mirror so he could see them.  It worked out great.  Next year he will be big enough that I can flip his car seat around to be forward facing just for the trip around the track. 
• Christmas time was so much fun! We went and cut down our own tree.  It was so blistery cold, but it is a tradition that I love.  Decorating the house confused Superman at first.  He wasn't sure what to make of it all.   Christmas day was also a lot of fun. He loved all the paper and the boxes....oh the boxes!  He loves his new toys, but for a while he just wanted to play with the wrapping.  We also went over to my husband's aunt and uncle's home for Christmas dinner and he got to play with his cousins.  I find it fascinating how much he wants to play with the big kids (although he did have some love for his cousin that is 4 months younger).  
• He has begun to throw everything!  He throws things out of his crib, out of his play area, and food onto the floor.  We are trying to ignore the behaviors that we don't like, but it is so hard when he throws food onto the floor with two hungry (they would say starving) dogs in the house.  We started putting the dogs upstairs while he was eating, but that is a big pain.  The thing that seems to work the best is just taking the rest of the food away and saying "all done".  If he isn't done? He reaches for the food and we help him eat by giving him one piece at a time.  Hopefully he will give this fun new game up soon!
• Superman has 2 new teeth! The two top molars have poked their way through...finally!  The one on the right poked through on Christmas eve and the one of the left on Christmas day. 
• Superman is SO.CLOSE to walking independently.  Prior to Christmas he had taken a couple steps independently, but not without a lot of encouragement.  On Christmas morning he was leaning on a box on blocks and all of a sudden just let go and stood on his own.  He fell when I started to freak out, but since then has stood independently many, many times. 
• S is beginning to feed himself with a spoon.  We have to put the food on the spoon, but he takes over from there.  Needless to say meals have gotten a bit more messy, but I love that he is becoming independent!
• He helped me put his toys away!  Tuesday night my husband was about to bring him up for his bath and I asked him to help me put the blocks in the bucket.  After watching me, he began to throw some of the blocks in too.  Once we were done, he took a couple out and threw it back in, probably because we made such a big stink every time he threw one in.  

Superman turns 1 on Sunday.  I can't believe it!  This year has gone by so quickly.  I have changed so much in that time, I hardly feel like the same person.   I am going to take some time this weekend and write Superman a letter for his first birthday.  Check back on Sunday to see it!

And ready to go!

Yesterday I posted about the realization that Superman had outgrown his infant car seat.  Today I am going to talk a little bit about what I did to find Superman's new seat.

Unless your child is over a year, the next car seat after the infant seat must be a convertible one.  Most state laws dictate that children must be at least 20 pounds and one year before they are allowed to be forward facing.  However, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA),

"For the best possible protection keep infants in the back seat, in rear-facing child safety seats, as long as possible up to the height or weight limit of the particular seat."

With this in mind, I knew that I wanted to not only get a convertible seat, but one that would allow Superman to stay rear-facing as long as possible. 

So the first thing I do whenever I need to buy something new is go to Consumer Reports.  Sadly, this time they dropped the ball for me initially.  I didn't feel like their reviews on car seats helped me much and they were recommending some seats that had really low scores.  Frankly, I just didn't understand it all.

The next thing I did was post on my personal Facebook page that we were looking for a new seat and wanted recommendations.  I thought that I might at least get some leads and maybe some car seats to stay away from.  Of the 21 responses, all but one person recommended the Britax and that person had a Combi and an Evenflo.  The three main Britax car seats people had were the Roundabout, Marathon, and Boulevard.

At this point I did go back to Consumer Reports and found that the Roundabout was the highest rated of the three, but had the lowest limits for weight (35 lbs rear facing & 50 lbs forward facing) and shoulder height  (max 16.25 for both rear and forward facing).  All three have a max height of 49 inches.

Since I want Superman to be rear facing for as long as possible, I felt like the Roundabout was out of the mix for me.   When I looked at the Marathon 70 and Boulevard 70 the only differences was the side impact protection.  The Boulevard has extra head support in case of a side impact collision.  According to Consumer Reports, the Boulevard also had a feature that allowed for adjusting the harness height without having to re-thread it.   Consumer Reports also rated the Boulevard higher than the Marathon.

I went back and forth over which of these two to get.  Amazon had them both on sale and the difference in price was about $20.   Finally my husband told me to get the one that was rated higher.  So we got the Boulevard 70.

I will be honest, when I saw how big the car seat I was a little worried that I went a bit overboard.  We could have gotten away with the Marathon...but it turned out we couldn't install it in the middle seat (and wouldn't have been able to install the Marathon in the middle either).  Now I am grateful to have the extra side impact protection.

Resources:
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)

• Ease of Use Ratings (descriptions) 
• Ease of Use Ratings (actual ratings)

Child Restraint Laws (by state)
Seat Check.org
Car Seat Recall List

**Disclaimer- I am not an expert on car seats.  I have no certifications or documents saying I should be giving advice. Therefore, take what I say as one mom's experience and do you own research.  Thank you.***

All buckled in...

A few days ago I wrote about safety on the internet...or rather I wrote about reading about safety on the internet. Today I am going to talk about safety in your car.  I know that many of you have little ones around the same age as my Superman.  Many of you probably are still using your infant car seat, aren't you?  It is okay to admit it, I was up until this week.

Thank goodness for friends with children older than my own.  I was at boot camp and it came up casually.  I had it stuck in my head that my infant car seat was rated to 30 pounds.  Superman is only 19 pounds so we were good.  What these ladies pointed out to me was that it is not just weight, but height that factors into the change to a bigger seat.  When they said that I had one of those, "OMG I can't believe I didn't think about that!" moments.

So I did a little research and found that the height limit for our infant seat was 30 inches.  Superman was 29 inches at 9 months.  Fortunately, we measured him again and he is still just 29 inches.  However, the other thing the manual said was that if his head was less than an inch from the top of the seat, it was time to get a bigger seat.  Sure enough Superman's head was less than an inch from the top.

So let me recap.  You should know the following limits for your current car seat:

• weight limit (if it is a convertible seat, you should know the limit for rear facing and forward facing)
• height limit (if it is a convertible seat, you should know the limit for rear facing and forward facing)
• shoulder height limit

Unless you are absolutely positive that your child is within the limits for their current car seat, I would go check right now. Oh and if you knew this already? Good job!  I am disappointed that I didn't know all this before, but feel better knowing that I have the information now.  If your child is too big for their car seat, don't beat yourself up, just do something about it.  If you aren't sure where to start, be sure to come back tomorrow when I will share my experience with shopping for Superman's new car seat.

**Disclaimer- I am not an expert on car seats.  I have no certifications or documents saying I should be giving advice. Therefore, take what I say as one mom's experience and do you own research.  Thank you.***