Big Boy Car Seat

I thought that Thor's infant car seat was good until he was 28 pounds--not sure where I got that number, but it was stuck in my head for some reason. Turns out it was only good until he was 22 pounds.  Hummmm, by the time I looked it up, it was 2 weeks past his one year check up where he weighed in at 22 lbs. 8 ozs. YIKES!

So we went and bought him a car seat that day.  But first I had to do tons of research on what was the safest and would last me the longest.

Gary was very particular about the carseat this time around.  In December, a friend Gary has known a long time was in a bad car accident.  He was driving his Navigator in morning traffic while it was foggy. Someone had blown a tire, PARKED their car in the middle of the interstate instead of moving it to the side, and left it there.  He saw it for barely a few seconds before he hit it going 65 mph--just fast enough to turn the wheel so it hit the front left corner of his truck.  The truck shoved his knee through his hip, shattering his leg and hip. His 6 year old twins were in the car. The firemen told him that the ONLY reason that the twins lived was that he insisted that they sit in huge 5 point harness booster seats. He was in the hospital for 4 months. The little girls walked away with bruises.

On the heels of that near disaster, we researched carseats A LOT. And we came up with the Evenflo Symphony 65 e3. It faces both rear and forward. We started it out facing forward and took Thor for a ride. It was the first time he could see out the windows while we drove.  This is him just sitting in the driveway:

He couldn't figure out what we were doing and treated it like we were joking around. And then we started driving... he got a littel nervous.

and then he looked out the window.

I wish I had taped it! He laughed his fool head off and clapped. Then he would stare out the window a while watching the other cars and then he would laugh his head off again.  He would start to jabber at us and point out the window. It was soo fun to watch him discover that we were really moving.  Unfortunately, the fascination with being in the new car seat only lasted so long....(hanger for our "vacation" post).