sit down and buckle up

took my car over to the fire department this morning to have them check the installation of our car seat. it didn't seem too terribly difficult to install but then again owner's manuals are not the easiest things to decipher, are they? my mother generously got us a graco quattro tour travel system which is this behemoth stroller and a carrier that snaps into a car seat base. it looks pretty easy to use but i was not sure how to install it in my 1999 honda, which is old enough that it does not have that LATCH system that seems pretty simplistic to use. i have read for years that something like 80% of all car seats are installed incorrectly and are therefore at risk of not protecting your baby in a crash, and while i don't anticipate having an accident, i want to be sure the car seat does what it is supposed to do if that happens. i think i would kill myself if my baby was hurt because i didn't take the time to make sure i was putting the car seat in correctly.

it was kind of a fun experience, i had never actually been in a fire station before. maybe when i was in preschool but i don't remember it. they had me pull my car into the garage which i didn't expect - right in there with the big trucks! and man is that garage huge.

i had tried installing the car seat yesterday and i thought i had gotten it in properly. good thing i went because it turned out that it could have been a lot better. i didn't install it wrong or badly... but it could have been a lot more secure. the instructions in the manual did not seem very clear to me and i did not realize that there is a ratcheting mechanism in the rear seat belts that locks the shoulder belt into place. that locking mechanism meant i could use the base and make sure it was strapped securely into the backseat. (the way i had it done before, i couldn't use the base.) the base is convenient because i can just pop out the carrier and take our gal into the grocery store or bank or wherever without having to unhook her from the car seat. and it's really easy to secure the base into the car and remove it later, if we want to put it in brian's car or something.

and, not to turn this into a product pitch, but the firefighter gal who did the seat check said they have found that the graco systems that we have are a great combination of safety and convenience and ease of use for parents. she said a lot of parents really like them, and the firefighters like them as well because they are easy to use safely. so kudos to my mother who picked up our travel system!

we are at: 25 weeks 2 days.