Car seat

We had to buy a new car seat. We'd gotten an infant seat/carrier from Kathy, but the seat was pretty old (like 8 years) and was past the mfr's warranty. And we were going to have to buy a convertible seat soon anyway, so we went ahead and just bought the convertible seat. We got an Evenflo Triumph DLX, which has a cool leathery-suedey finish and pretty yellow knobs. That's how you can tell the quality - from the color of the knobs.

Actually, it gets pretty high marks from users on Amazon. Some people found it hard to use, because they're not very bright. (Just kidding.) Actually, the harness-adjusting knobs are a bit unique and were a little hard to figure out in the store - but once we figured it out I think it was fine. Plus, we'll have plenty of room in the momi-van to fight with the thing. At $130, it was a pretty reasonable deal - at least, compared to the rest of the market. I still want to know how much of the price of kiddie accessories is liability insurance. It has to be at least half. Seriously. It's some padded plastic with a seat belt, and it's over a hundred bucks? C'mon.

The downside of buying the convertible seat for the car now is that we'll have to unstrap the kid when we get him somewhere and dump him into the carrier or stroller, rather than using the infant seat as both a car seat and carrier. We coulda dropped another $100 for an infant seat that attaches right to the stroller. Maybe for the next kid, when convenience will be at more of a premium and the budget won't be so tight, we can do those things. For now, we'll just rough it like people have done for thousands of years.