The 7 Year Carseat

You may know that I have 500 children. Or maybe just 6. Either way, it’s a lot. 

When Jim and I had our first baby, we were cute, young, completely incompetent parents. Both of us worked in jobs where we gave other people advice about child-raising (he as a doctor, me as a visiting nurse). I find that hilarious if not criminal when I think back. Good luck to those poor people who listened to us then. Lol

In our wisdom, we made interesting choices. One of them was the 7-year carseat. 

We decided that we were too smart to buy a series of expensive car seats for our beloved baby, Rae. Instead, we were enthralled by a remarkable contraption we saw at the once regal Toys'R'Us. 

The 7 Year Car Seat was the answer to our car seat problems. When we decided to buy the 7 Year we were making a commitment to a substantial piece of plastic with a darling fabric cover that would transform from an adorable infant seat for our tiny baby, to a robust booster for her when she entered first grade. What a deal. 

Except it wasn’t. 

The 7 Year Carseat made a horrible infant seat. Baby Rae slumped uncomfortably in it when we tried to get her settled for her first ride. Hmm...must have been operator error, we thought. We didn’t get her settled in correctly. Try again. Not an improvement. 

Meanwhile, we noticed that Baby Rae’s cousins were happily riding around in specifically designed infant car seats. Darn, we thought. Maybe we should just get an infant car seat for Rae - for just a while - and then get her back into The 7 Year. 

Which we did. 

But of course, when it came time to shift her into the next version of her mega car seat, it was also a bad fit, and so was the one after that.

Suffice it to say, buying the 7 Year was a very bad idea but it taught us some very good lessons. 

Those lessons being: things change over time. It’s perfectly fine to change your mind or find new solutions as you go along. Take care of yourself now. Tomorrow will be here soon enough and you don’t know what you’re going to need yet. Don’t let your ego get in the way of what you really want. 

True in car seats and in life.