Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Car seat woes

I have a love-hate relationship with car seats.

On the one hand, they do this little thing called protect-my-children. We completely enforce the law with car seats. Our children have never been in a moving vehicle without their seatbelts or safety straps securely fastened. (Well, okay, one time when my daughter was a baby, I unknowingly drove around the corner to the gas station without her straps buckled. I about had a heart attack and berated myself for hours over what could have been a horrible tragedy.)
When the kids were babies and screaming bloody murder on long car trips, we either powered through or we pulled over and let them wiggle. We sang songs, we tried white noise on the radio, anything to calm them down. I even tried nursing one of the kids while he was in his car seat. I do not recommend this, by the way.
My point being, we never (knowingly) fudge on the car seat law.

That being said, car seats make me crazy!! It takes my husband several tries to install the car seats (though he's been doing this for 8+ years, it is still impossibly difficult!). To get it it completely tight, he has to put his whole body weight into the seat, attach the little silver clip, wiggle it around to be sure it worked, sweat profusely, and pray fervently. Usually this is all done under severe time constraints, 100 degree heat or pouring rain. Forget the possibility of me installing one. I am not nearly strong enough, and when I try, my effort is laughable. The seat wiggles around so much you could actually fit one of the children behind the car seat.
The straps are also frustrating! Just today, I was buckling in my youngest, and his straps were all twisted. How does this happen? Each time we buckle him, we are careful to keep them straight. It's as if the seat has it in for us.
We will continue dutifully putting our kids in car seats and booster seats (I think our daughter will take her booster on her first date - she'll be 16 before she gets to the 80 lb. requirement!), but just because I love them, doesn't mean I can't hate them too. I'm a woman. I have the right to several conflicting opinions at once.

1 comment:

KIM :-) said...

I wholeheartedly concur! :-) And I admit, I did the same thing with Jake that you did with your oldest. I pulled out of Sam's Club and drove down the street when it suddenly hit me that he was not strapped in!!! Yikes! HAHA :-D